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

In 2012, 2.4 million Canadians reported suffering from generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) in their lifetime. GAD is a chronic condition characterized by excessive and uncontrollable worry, associated with high medical utilization (e.g., high risk of heart attacks, peptic ulcer disease) and considerable societal and economic burden (e.g., high unemployment). Over 50% of Canadians with GAD report their mental health needs go unmet, which necessitates research on novel interventions for GAD that are effective and easy to disseminate. Cognitive bias modification (CBM) is a computerized intervention that directly targets a process that maintains worry and GAD: the tendency to appraise ambiguous information in a negative or catastrophic way. CBM training repeatedly guides favorable appraisals of ambiguous information. Research in depression has found that the effects of CBM are augmented through the use of mental imagery. The present study is a novel investigation of the therapeutic potential of imagery enhanced CBM (IE-CBM) for GAD. Individuals with GAD will be assigned to one of three conditions: 1) IE-CBM where they will practice generating positive resolutions of ambiguous information using mental imagery; 2) CBM, in which participants will complete the CBM training without instruction to use imagery; and 3) a neutral condition that will determine whether it is the act of reading scenarios alone that improves GAD related processes. All conditions will complete 30 minutes of their respective practice at home every day for 7 days. It is hypothesized that IE-CBM will lead to the greatest improvements in GAD processes, relative to the other conditions, pre- to post-training and at a 2-week follow-up. IE-CBM has considerable promise as an intervention to improve the tendency to assume the worst in GAD, a tendency that maintains chronic worry. PI-CBM is inexpensive, easy to disseminate, and could help meet the high mental health care needs of Canadians with GAD.