Dismantling, optimising, and personalising internet cognitive behavioural therapy for depression: a systematic review and component network meta-analysis

Internet cognitive behavioural therapy (iCBT) is a viable delivery format of CBT for depression. However, iCBT programmes include training in a wide array of cognitive and behavioural skills via different delivery methods, and it remains unclear which of these components are more efficacious and for whom. In a study that was just published in The Lancet … Read more

Internet Interventions for Adults with Anxiety and Mood Disorders: A Narrative Umbrella Review of Recent Meta-Analyses

Internet-delivered cognitive behaviour therapy (ICBT) has existed for 20 years and there are now several controlled trials for a range of problems. In this paper, we focused on recent meta-analytic reviews of the literature and found moderate to large effects reported for panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, and major … Read more

In the Absence of Effects: An Individual Patient Data Meta-Analysis of Non-response and Its Predictors in Internet-Based Cognitive Behavior Therapy

Negative effects of psychological treatments have recently received increased attention in both research and clinical practice. Most investigations have focused on determining the occurrence and characteristics of deterioration and other adverse and unwanted events, such as interpersonal issues, indicating that patients quite frequently experience such incidents in treatment. However, non-response is also negative if it … Read more

Special issue with 4 new papers on treatment using Virtual reality

Today a special issue was published in Journal of Anxiety disorders. A total of 11 papers are included and we are involved in four of those. The most longed for paper is probably the updated version of the classic meta-analysis by Emmelkamp and Powers published in 2008. Trials of virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET) for … Read more

Internet-based vs. face-to-face cognitive behavior therapy for psychiatric and somatic disorders: an updated systematic review and meta-analysis.

In 2014 we published a first study investigating the relative effects of Internet-based vs. face-to-face cognitive behavior therapy. The study was picked up by the Wall Street Journal During the last two decades, Internet-delivered cognitive behavior therapy (ICBT) has been tested in hundreds of randomized controlled trials, often with promising results. However, the control groups … Read more

Processing confusing procedures in the recent re-analysis of a cognitive bias modification (CBM) meta-analysis

Those worried about the cognitive bias modification field being affected by ever-moving goal posts may have thought their concerns confirmed by Grafton and colleagues’ re-analysis of the meta-analysis by Cristea and colleagues[1,2]. The paper concludes with the suggestion that we should only call CBM CBM if it is successful. To provide a treatment-inspired analogue: “This? … Read more

Multi-center mega-analysis of brain structure in social anxiety disorder

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is a prevalent and disabling mental disorder, associated with significant psychiatric co-morbidity. Previous research on structural brain alterations associated with SAD has yielded inconsistent results concerning the direction of the changes in gray matter (GM) in various brain regions, as well as on the relationship between brain structure and SAD-symptomatology. These … Read more

Less is more: Patient-Level metaanalysis reveals paradoxical effects

The past decade of research has seen considerable interest in computer-based approaches designed to directly target cognitive mechanisms of anxiety, such as Attention Bias Modification (ABM). By pooling patient-level datasets from randomized controlled trials of ABM that utilized a dot-probe training procedure, we assessed the impact of training ‘dose’ on relevant outcomes among a pooled sample of 693 socially … Read more

Pooled patient-level meta-analysis of children and adults completing a computer-based anxiety intervention targeting attentional bias

Computer-based approaches, such as Attention Bias Modification (ABM), could help improve access to care for anxiety. Study-level meta-analyses of Attention Bias Modification have produced conflicting findings and leave critical questions unresolved regarding ABM’s mechanisms of action and clinical potential. In a paper that was just accepted for publication in Clinical Psychology Review (see reference below) we … Read more

Does Internet based guided-self-help for depression cause harm?

Almost nothing is known about potential negative effects of Internet-based psychological treatments for depression. In a new study, that was just accepted for publication in Psychological Medicine we aimed at investigating deterioration and its moderators within randomised trials on Internet-based guided self-help interventions for adult depression, using an individual patient data meta-analyses (IPDMA) approach. Studies … Read more