Abstract
Background: Anxiety and depression are leading causes of disability worldwide, yet individuals are often unable to access appropriate treatment. There is a need to develop effective interventions that can be delivered remotely. Previous research has suggested that emotional processing biases are a potential target for intervention, and these may be altered through brief training programs.
Methods: We report two experimental medicine studies of emotional bias training in two samples: individuals from the general population (n = 522) and individuals currently taking antidepressants to treat anxiety or depression (n = 212). Participants, recruited online, completed four sessions of EBT from their own home. Mental health and cognitive functioning outcomes were assessed at baseline, immediately post-training, and at 2-week follow-up.
Results: In both studies, our intervention successfully trained participants to perceive ambiguous social information more positively. This persisted at a 2-week follow-up. There was no clear evidence that this change in emotional processing transferred to improvements in symptoms in the primary analyses. However, in both studies, there was weak evidence for improved quality of life following EBT amongst individuals with more depressive symptoms at baseline. No clear evidence of transfer effects was observed for self-reported daily stress, anhedonia or depressive symptoms. Exploratory analyses suggested that younger participants reported greater treatment gains.
Conclusions: These studies demonstrate the effectiveness of delivering a multi-session online training program to promote lasting cognitive changes. Given the inconsistent evidence for transfer effects, EBT requires further development before it can be considered as a treatment for anxiety and depression.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 696-705 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| Journal | Psychological Medicine |
| Volume | 53 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| Early online date | 31 May 2021 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Feb 2023 |
Data Availability Statement
The datasets underlying the results reported here, and accompanying R analysis scripts, are available on the University of Bristol data repository, data.bris, at https://doi.org/10.5523/bris.lowf35tsgxav2rnb1jpvjvkm3 and https://doi.org/10.5523/bris.1jk6puznegx4121cjt72j1mln9.Funding
This research was supported by an Innovate UK Knowledge Transfer Partnership grant (KTP010453) that enabled the knowledge transfer between the University of Bristol and Cambridge Cognition Ltd., and by the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre at University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust and the University of Bristol (BRC-1215-20011). The views expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NHS, the National Institute for Health Research or the Department of Health and Social Care. It was also supported by the Economic and Social Research Council and the Medical Research Council Integrative Epidemiology Unit (MRC IEU) at the University of Bristol (MM_UU_00011/7).
Keywords
- Anxiety
- cognitive training
- depression
- digital intervention
- emotional processing
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Applied Psychology
- Psychiatry and Mental health
