Grant: Doctoral Award - Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships

Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is an anxiety disorder in which people experience worry that is excessive and difficult to control. This disorder afflicts 4-7% of Canadians across their lifetime and is associated with significant difficulties including trouble in social relationships, difficulty at work or school, and vulnerability to other mental and physical health issues. When people with GAD worry, it leads to trouble problem-solving, difficulty dealing with emotions, and a tendency to see neutral situations as threatening. One explanation for the negative effects of worry is that worry takes up a lot of mental energy, or what is called working memory capacity. This study will examine the benefits of an intervention called written exposure in which people with GAD repeatedly write about their worst fear coming true. Past research suggests that this type of intervention improves anxiety, but it is still unknown how it has these beneficial effects. We hypothesize that the improvement in anxiety symptoms associated with written exposure are due to the intervention's positive effects on working memory capacity. We will test this by having individuals with GAD write about their worries for 20 minutes a day, 3 days in a row, and compare their improvements in anxiety and working memory to individuals with GAD who wrote about a neutral topic for the same amount of time. We will use statistical methods to determine whether changes working memory capacity predict changes in anxiety severity. If written exposure is found to be helpful in improving anxiety symptoms and working memory in people with GAD, this would be an important contribution to our understanding of the treatment of this disorder. Additionally, written exposure is a brief treatment that could be easily distributed to people with GAD, helping to address the under-served mental health needs of people struggling with this disorder.