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

For one in every twenty Canadians, worrying can be a distressing experience. Individuals who worry excessively regularly seek help from family physicians and other health care practitioners to investigate common anxiety symptoms that might be misinterpreted as medical conditions. If practitioners could reduce their worrying by using a brief intervention, this would result in significant cost savings for the health care system. Currently, practitioners treat individuals who worry excessively with medication or brief counselling, but there has been no research that examines the effectiveness of brief therapy for excessive worrying. The present study will examine the effectiveness of three one-session interventions, by utilizing techniques from three effective 12-week psychotherapies. Approximately 90 individuals who identify as chronic worriers will be recruited. Participants will complete measures of excessive worrying, symptoms of related issues, and treatment credibility and implementation questionnaires. Half of the participants will then be entered into treatment, while the other half of participants will first undergo a 5-week waitlist period before entering treatment. For treatment, participants will be given information on chronic worrying and have one of the treatment strategies explained to them. Participants will then complete questionnaires each week to track changes in symptoms, treatment credibility, and implementation for four weeks, followed by a meeting with the researcher in the fifth week where the measures will be completed a final time. Participants will complete a follow-up questionnaire 4 months after the end of treatment. This study will advance this area by attempting to translate the treatments of chronic worrying from 12-week treatments to brief interventions. This study is a first step in the creation of new options for the treatment of excessive worrying by practitioners, which may improve the cost-effectiveness of the health care system.