Publications by authors named "M Voncken"

Introduction: Bipolar disorder is a severe mental health problem with limited treatment success. There is a call for improving interventions, requiring an increased understanding of factors driving mood instability. One promising avenue is to study temporal associations between factors that appear relevant according to the emotional amplifier model of Holmes are changes in mood, anxiety and mental imagery.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • - Psychological treatment for social anxiety disorder (SAD) is less effective than for other anxiety disorders, but focusing on the negative mental images associated with SAD could improve treatment outcomes.
  • - A systematic review of 21 studies found that imagery-based interventions, particularly imagery rescripting, showed promising effects on reducing social anxiety and imagery distress, especially in those with a clinical diagnosis of SAD.
  • - Future research should explore how these imagery interventions can enhance existing treatments for SAD and consider including younger populations, as some limitations were identified in the current studies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background And Objectives: Imagery Rescripting (ImRs) aims to reduce trauma-related negative emotions and intrusions. Positive emotions during ImRs may aid coping with the consequences of trauma, but protocols vary in the extent to which they explicitly target such positive emotions. We used a multiple-day design with a trauma film paradigm to investigate whether adding an explicit positive emotion component to ImRs improved intervention effects in a non-clinical sample.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background And Objectives: It has been proposed that negative mental imagery plays an important role in the persistence of social fears. Experiencing vivid and distressing 'flashforward' images of a potential social catastrophe appears to be of relevance in speech anxiety. To clarify the role of these images, the current experimental study tested if reducing the vividness and distressing properties of recurring negative flashforward images subsequently reduces anxiety and avoidance tendencies regarding a speech.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background And Objectives: CBT for patients with bipolar disorder has modest effects. Across disorders, mental imagery has been used to update CBT to increase effectiveness. In order to enhance CBT for bipolar disorder with imagery techniques, research is needed into emotional imagery quality and, related appraisals of imagery and their relationships with mood instability and subsequent behaviour in bipolar disorder.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF