Results from a randomized controlled trial of zonisamide in the treatment of alcohol use disorder.

There is preliminary evidence that the anticonvulsant medication Zonisamide (ZON) may be an effective, well-tolerated treatment for alcohol use disorder (AUD). However, further evaluation of its efficacy for treating patients with AUD is needed, and much remains unknown about ZON's therapeutic mechanisms. The present study aimed to evaluate the efficacy and tolerability of ZON in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized trial.

Measuring Emotion Regulation Skill Use During Treatment: A Promising Methodological Approach.

Emotion regulation has become ubiquitous in the study of psychopathology and a growing number of treatment outcome studies are collecting data on emotion regulation skill use. However, traditional measures of emotion regulation fail to capture important nuances in emotion regulation processes, their relationship to psychopathology, and how individuals use emotion regulation skills over time and across contexts. Novel methodologies are particularly needed for measuring emotion regulation in the context of treatment studies.

Transitioning From In-Person to Remote Clinical Research on Depression and Traumatic Brain Injury During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Study Modifications and Preliminary Feasibility From a Randomized Controlled Pilot Study.

Background: Telehealth has provided many researchers, especially those conducting psychosocial research, with the tools necessary to transition from in-person to remote clinical trials during the COVID-19 pandemic. A growing body of research supports the effectiveness of telemental health for a variety of psychiatric conditions, but few studies have examined telemental health for individuals with comorbid medical diagnoses. Furthermore, little is known about the remote implementation of clinical trials examining telemental health interventions.

Homework Compliance and Quality in Cognitive Behavioral Therapies for Anxiety Disorders and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

Homework assignments are an integral part of cognitive behavioral therapy, providing patients with opportunities to practice skills between sessions. Generally, greater homework compliance is associated with better treatment outcomes. However, fewer studies have examined the effect of homework quality on treatment outcomes.

Mindful Emotion Awareness Facilitates Engagement with Exposure Therapy: An Idiographic Exploration Using Single Case Experimental Design.

Exposure therapy works through inhibitory learning, whereby patients are exposed to stimuli that elicit anxiety in order to establish safety associations. Mindful emotion awareness, or nonjudgmental and present-focused attention toward emotions, may facilitate engagement in exposures, which may in turn enhance therapeutic outcome. This study utilizes a single-case experimental design ( = 6) to investigate the effect of mindful emotion awareness training on the use of avoidant strategies during exposures, distress during exposures, overall mindfulness, experiential avoidance, and symptom reduction in a sample of participants with social anxiety disorder.

Fostering engagement in early sessions of transdiagnostic cognitive-behavioral therapy.

This article describes the early sessions of a transdiagnostic cognitive-behavioral treatment for emotional disorders that is designed to target temperamental characteristics, particularly neuroticism and resulting emotion dysregulation, underlying all anxiety, depressive, and related disorders. These sessions facilitate clinical improvement by setting realistic expectations, fostering a collaborative therapeutic alliance, and improving motivation for change. Addressing these common factors in early sessions strengthens patient engagement, which is necessary for patients to benefit most greatly from subsequent treatment elements.

Prepulse inhibition deficits in women with PTSD.

Prepulse inhibition (PPI) is an automatic and preattentive process, whereby a weak stimulus attenuates responding to a sudden and intense startle stimulus. PPI is a measure of sensorimotor filtering, which is conceptualized as a mechanism that facilitates processing of an initial stimulus and is protective from interruption by a later response. Impaired PPI has been found in (a) healthy women during the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle, and (b) individuals with types of psychopathology characterized by difficulty suppressing and filtering sensory, motor, or cognitive information.