My goal in obtaining this Kirschstein-NRSA Individual Fellowship is to support my research in pathological worry interventions. More specifically, despite the ostensible prevalence of academic worry at the college and university level, there is a paucity of research in this area. In addition, there is an even greater dearth of research investigating treatments for excessive and uncontrollable academic worry. Further, the research on non-pharmacological treatment strategies for reducing pathological worry (as seen in its most severe form in generalized anxiety disorder GAD) is limited. My research goal is to investigate the potential benefits of several interventions in reducing academic worry and the distress associated with that worry. I propose to conduct a 4-arm randomized clinical trial investigating the relative efficacy of three self-administered interventions and a wait-list control condition for students experiencing pathological academic worry: a) worry exposure, b) expressive writing, c) pulsed audio-photic stimulation, and d) wait-list control. If any or all of the active interventions prove to be efficacious, future investigations regarding the efficacy of these interventions on more general worries in a clinical GAD population may be warranted.
| Wolitzky-Taylor, Kate B; Telch, Michael J (2010) Efficacy of self-administered treatments for pathological academic worry: A randomized controlled trial. Behav Res Ther 48:840-50 |
