A preliminary examination of the effects of transdiagnostic versus single diagnosis protocols on anger during the treatment of anxiety disorders

Date Issued
2018-07Publisher Version
10.1097/NMD.0000000000000834Author(s)
Cassiello-Robbins, Clair
Sauer-Zavala, Shannon E.
Wilner, Julianne G.
Bentley, Kate H.
Conklin, Laren R.
Farchione, Todd J.
Barlow, David H.
Metadata
Show full item recordPermanent Link
https://hdl.handle.net/2144/41841Version
Accepted manuscript
Citation (published version)
Clair Cassiello-Robbins, S.E. Sauer-Zavala, Julianne Wilner, Katherine Bentley, Laren Conklin, T. Farchione, David Barlow. 2018. "A preliminary examination of the effects of transdiagnostic versus single diagnosis protocols on anger during the treatment of anxiety disorders." Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, Volume 206, Issue 7, pp. 549 - 554. https://doi.org/10.1097/NMD.0000000000000834Abstract
Dysregulated anger is often present in the emotional (i.e., anxiety, mood, and related) disorders, however it is rarely targeted in treatment. Transdiagnostic treatments, which focus on processes that contribute to dysregulated emotions across the range of psychopathology, might represent an efficient way to treat this anger. Using a subset of data from a recently completed equivalency trial comparing the Unified Protocol for Transdiagnostic Treatment of Emotional Disorders (UP) to single diagnosis protocols (SDPs) for specific disorders, this study began exploring whether the UP led to great reductions in anger compared to the SDPs. Results indicated that there was a small, non-significant, decrease in anger in the UP condition, whereas there was a moderate, non-significant increase in anger in the SDP condition. At post treatment, UP patients had significantly lower anger scores than patients who received a SDP. These preliminary results suggest that transdiagnostic treatments may be well poised to target dyregulated anger in the context of emotional disorders.
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