Anxiety disorder is a common psychiatric condition. It is very worrying and challenging to live with this disease. There are several ways to cope with an anxiety disorder. According to experts, although there are various effective therapies for managing anxiety disorders, most patients find them complicated and difficult to implement.
To overcome this situation, a study was conducted at Concordia University in Montreal. The study says patients play a vital role in helping researchers devise effective techniques to manage anxiety disorders.
Patients play a key role
The researchers of the study, published in the Journal of Anxiety Disorders in May 2016, believed that the very behaviors that people use to thwart anxiety could become part of an effective treatment. These behaviors can be anything that people generally do to cope with anxiety. For example, safety precautions that people take, such as wearing gloves before touching dirty objects, avoiding eye contact in stressful situations, distracting yourself from something scary, etc., could be used to formulate effective treatments for anxiety disorders.
"Traditionally, psychologists believed that the disappearance or complete elimination of these behaviors should be the primary goal of therapy used to combat anxiety disorders. However, we found that changing these behaviors and giving patients more freedom is much more effective," said Adam Radomsky, a professor at Concordia Department of Psychology.
It helps patients make their own decisions
Radomsky and researcher Hannah Levy conducted a study on 157 respondents, including people with low levels of anxiety and victims of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). Patients adapted old habits to new ones in order to use them as a safety measure to avoid anxiety during exposure therapy (when patients were exposed to frightening situations, objects without any danger). They found that the most important aspect of using safe behaviors in therapy was allowing the patient to decide when they were ready to move forward without them.
The new security measures are more useful
The researchers hypothesized that using new safety behaviors proved more beneficial during exposure therapy compared to their usual or typical safety behaviors.
"This differs from the standard approach in which therapists encourage people to abandon their safety behaviors early in therapy, which often results in people dropping out or refusing treatment. Under the right conditions, safety behaviors have the potential to make therapy more effective and acceptable ,” Levy said.
Reducing dropout rates
The researchers said the new experiment would be useful for therapists in shaping their approach to helping the individual patients they work with. This would certainly prevent a sharp drop in the number of patients who stop treatment.
"We hope these findings will help reduce the number of people who refuse or leave cognitive behavioral therapy, and should lead to more people getting the help they need," Levy said.
Although anxiety disorder is a debilitating condition, it is treatable with effective procedures and early intervention. If a loved one is struggling with an anxiety disorder and you are looking for anxiety treatment centers, contact Anxiety Treatment Centers of California.
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