Efficacy of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Anxiety-Related Disorders: A Meta-Analysis of Recent Literature.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Effective treatment of anxiety-related disorders is crucial, considering the prevalence of such disorders and their association with poor psychosocial functioning. To evaluate the most recent evidence on the efficacy of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for anxiety-related disorders in adults, we conducted a meta-analysis of randomized placebo-controlled trials published since 2017. RECENT FINDINGS: Ten studies with a total of 1250 participants met the inclusion criteria. Seven of these studies examined PTSD. The findings demonstrated small placebo-controlled effects of CBT on target disorder symptoms (Hedges' g = 0.24, p < 0.05) and depression (Hedges' g = 0.15, p = n.s). When examining only PTSD studies, effects were reduced (Hedges' g = 0.14, p < 0.05). Heterogeneity in most analyses was very low, and no publication bias was found. Effect sizes from placebo-controlled trials from the past 5 years appear to be smaller than those in prior meta-analyses. The findings are largely driven by research on PTSD, with few placebo-controlled trials of other anxiety-related disorders published since 2017.

CoVidAffect, real-time monitoring of mood variations following the COVID-19 outbreak in Spain.

The COVID-19 outbreak and the ensuing confinement measures are expected to bear a significant psychological impact on the affected populations. To date, all available studies designed to investigate the psychological effects of this unprecedented global crisis are based on cross-sectional surveys that do not capture emotional variations over time. Here, we present the data from CoVidAffect, a nationwide citizen science project aimed to provide longitudinal data of mood changes following the COVID-19 outbreak in the spanish territory. Spain is among the most affected countries by the pandemic, with one of the most restrictive and prolonged lockdowns worldwide. The project also collected a baseline of demographic and socioeconomic data. These data can be further analyzed to quantify emotional responses to specific measures and policies, and to understand the effect of context variables on psychological resilience. Importantly, to our knowledge this is the first dataset that offers the opportunity to study the behavior of emotion dynamics in a prolonged lockdown situation.

Smartphone-Based Platform for Affect Monitoring through Flexibly Managed Experience Sampling Methods.

The identification of daily life events that trigger significant changes on our affective state has become a fundamental task in emotional research. To achieve it, the affective states must be assessed in real-time, along with situational information that could contextualize the affective data acquired. However, the objective monitoring of the affective states and the context is still in an early stage. Mobile technologies can help to achieve this task providing immediate and objective data of the users' context and facilitating the assessment of their affective states. Previous works have developed mobile apps for monitoring affective states and context, but they use a fixed methodology which does not allow for making changes based on the progress of the study. This work presents a multimodal platform which leverages the potential of the smartphone sensors and the Experience Sampling Methods (ESM) to provide a continuous monitoring of the affective states and the context in an ubiquitous way. The platform integrates several elements aimed to expedite the real-time management of the ESM questionnaires. In order to show the potential of the platform, and evaluate its usability and its suitability for real-time assessment of affective states, a pilot study has been conducted. The results demonstrate an excellent usability level and a good acceptance from the users and the specialists that conducted the study, and lead to some suggestions for improving the data quality of mobile context-aware ESM-based systems.