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Acceptability of a brief training programme targeting attention and interpretation biases for threat in youth with a history of maltreatment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2019

Jennifer Y.F. Lau Open the ORCID record for Jennifer Y.F. Lau [Opens in a new window] ,
Narayan Prasad Sharma ,
Eleanor Bennett ,
Sandesh Dhakal ,
Ayesha Vaswani ,
Rakesh Pandey ,
Shanta Niraula  and
Veena Kumari
Jennifer Y.F. Lau*
Affiliation:
Psychology Department, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London, De Crespigny Park, London SE5 8AF, UK
Narayan Prasad Sharma
Affiliation:
Central Department of Psychology, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal
Eleanor Bennett
Affiliation:
Psychology Department, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London, De Crespigny Park, London SE5 8AF, UK
Sandesh Dhakal
Affiliation:
Central Department of Psychology, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal
Ayesha Vaswani
Affiliation:
Psychology Department, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London, De Crespigny Park, London SE5 8AF, UK
Rakesh Pandey
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi-221 005, UP, India
Shanta Niraula
Affiliation:
Central Department of Psychology, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal
Veena Kumari
Affiliation:
Psychology Department, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London, De Crespigny Park, London SE5 8AF, UK Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, College of Health and Life Sciences, Brunel University London, Uxbridge UB8 3PH, UK
*
*Corresponding author. Email: jennifer.lau@kcl.ac.uk
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Abstract

Background:

Tendencies to attend to threatening cues in the environment and to interpret ambiguous situations with negative/hostile intent maintain and may even precipitate internalizing and externalizing problems in young people with a history of maltreatment. Challenging maladaptive information-processing styles using cognitive bias modification (CBM) training may reduce symptoms.

Aims:

To investigate the acceptability of CBM training in nine young people attending alternate education provision units in the UK, and 10 young people living in out-of-home care institutions in Nepal with a history of maltreatment.

Method:

CBM training consisted of five sessions of training over a 2-week period; each training session consisted of one module targeting attention biases and one module targeting interpretation biases for threat. A feedback form administered after training measured acceptability. Pre- and post-intervention measures of internalizing and externalizing symptoms were also taken.

Results:

Most young people (89%) found the training helpful and 84% found the training materials realistic. There were reductions in many symptom domains, but with individual variation. Although limited by the lack of a control condition, we established generalizability of acceptability across participants from two cultural settings.

Conclusions:

Replication of these findings in larger feasibility randomized controlled trials with measures of attention and interpretation bias before and after intervention, are needed to assess the potential of CBM in reducing anxiety symptoms and its capacity to engage targeted mechanisms.

Keywords

childhood adverse eventscognitive bias modification trainingfeasibilityinformation-processing biasespreventionvictimization
Type
Brief Clinical Report
Information
Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy , Volume 48 , Issue 3 , May 2020 , pp. 370 - 375
Copyright
© British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies 2019

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Footnotes

‡

Contributed equally as first authors.

§

Contributed equally as senior authors.

References

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