Anxiety and Psychotherapy

Associate Professor Thomas L. Rodebaugh gives his scientifically informed opinion about clinical psychology, psychotherapy, anxiety, anxiety disorders, and anything else he finds really interesting. (Citations and formal arguments available as the need arises.)

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I have a short story in this! Yes, you read that right: A short story. It is available now.  

I’ll probably say some more about this later, but it may mostly be on twitter, where I’m drrodebaugh.

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If you want to find out what's really going on with psychological processes, you either need as many repeated measures as you can get, an experiment, or, preferably, both. I know, I've said it before, but I have a feeling I'm going to have to keep saying it louder and louder. Relying on cross sectional data when you are interested in causes that unfold across time looks increasingly like a bad bet to me. (Check out Maxwell and Cole if you haven't already on this issue.)

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Moron-Concepcion, Rodebaugh receive Brain & Behavior research grants | The Source | Washington University in St. Louis

Washington University in St. Louis researchers Jose A. Moron-Concepcion and Thomas Rodebaugh are among 40 scholars selected to receive 2017 Independent Investigator grants from the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, one of the top nongovernmental funders of mental health research grants.

I’m in a press release! Neat.

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W!ZARD Radio Station (in partnership with newsPeeks) presents Awkward Questions - the show that investigates the difficult questions which need to be asked. Including interviews with the likes of Dr Tom Rodebaugh (Assoc. Professor of Psychological & Brain Sciences), Emily Mcdonagh (Mental Health Under Capitalism) and more, this week's episode investigates Anxiety.

I’m in the internets, playing on your radios. I was pleased to say a little about social anxiety and how to get help for it for a youth-focused program on the UK-based internet radio station W!ZARD (the Saturday, 4/29/17 show for “Awkward Questions,” if you’re coming to this later). My part is about 17 minutes in. Toward the end, my colleague Michelle Lim talks about loneliness.

I sound a little like I’m calling in from space because of the connection. (Unless I was really calling in from space [spoilers, I was not calling from space]).

I especially liked that the presenters ended by pointing out that the listeners in the UK have specific resources for trouble with social anxiety disorder and other similar problems.

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I did two media interviews today; one local, one from the UK. Do I have a big new research finding? Uh, no. In fact, the interviews were on two entirely different subjects. Sometimes it’s weird being a researcher.

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Taking public transport to the science March in St Louis!

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We are proud to announce $3.9 million has been awarded in NARSAD Independent Investigator Grants to 40 mid-career scientists from 36 institutions in 10 countries for basic research to understand what happens in the brain to cause mental illness; new technologies to advance or create new ways of studying and understanding the brain; diagnostic tools / early intervention t

I am honored and excited to be one of 40 Independent Investigator Grantees! 

Look, there I am (under depression, which might seem odd, but it’s true that depression is one of the issues at hand):

Thomas L. Rodebaugh, Ph.D., Washington University, Dr. Rodebaugh will examine the biological mechanism through which loneliness can lead to poor health and increased mortality, particularly among older adults. Social support reduces loneliness and shields against mood consequences of stress. The hormone oxytocin may play a role in the protective effects of social support. Dr. Rodebaugh’s team will measure circulating oxytocin levels in the biological samples of an ongoing longitudinal study of older adults to examine associations between this hormone and indices of social function and experience. The findings will also reveal whether oxytocin level can act as a potential biomarker for future vulnerability to loneliness and mental health symptoms.

I study oxytocin now. Oxytocin is cool.

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Ten Meter Tower

Would you jump? Or would you chicken out?

Sixteen minutes of people coping with fear of heights; or, a portrait of the prefrontal cortex trying to manage amygdala.

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New article on vulnerabilities for social anxiety

https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1UYCQbZg6yd8N

My co-authors and I tested a model of the factors thought to lead to social anxiety (and social anxiety disorder). The article is free to all until early April; if you get here after that point, I’m afraid you’ll need institutional access. 

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I just called all my representatives

. . . to protest the federal hiring freeze affecting VAs. Claire McCaskill has already signed a letter protesting this, and Roy Blunt’s people politely wrote down my concern. A special shout out to how receptive, interested, and engaged Ann Wagner's people were. They were concerned about not only the general health care issue (why should our vets have longer lines to see a doctor because new ones can't be hired?) but also the training issue on the psychology side. 

Right now, clinical psychology students around the country are questioning whether they can expect that VAs will be training sites for them for their internships--internships that are required for their program of study, that involve them providing a lot of clinical care for little pay, and that they have to submit their rankings for in less than a week.

If you are concerned about this too, try calling your representatives. You might be surprised at the response.

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Is this a (population-level) fear network?

Generated through the “Small World of Words” project. This looks remarkably like the kind of fear network I might draw on the board while explaining the Foa and Kozak “fear structure” concept. 

Explore networks here, but also participate in the project (in English) here. On a clinical level, the networks keep including words I would never think to include in an imaginal exposure (here, “animal” and “man”--under “snake” you find “apple”). There may be a study in there somewhere. . .

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Can Scientific Communication be Neutral?

The theory behind the interpersonal circumplex tells us that how people act around and toward other people is interpreted on two major dimensions. These dimensions are dominance and warmth. So, how you act toward someone else can involve asserting your dominance or submitting to someone else’s. It can also involve opening up to someone else and giving them the sense that you’re on the same team--or holding back, being aloof, making it clear that you’re not on the same team. These two dimensions combine, of course: “We’re on the same team, but I’m in charge.” 

I do believe that most scientists primarily want to determine and communicate the truth. In theory, interpersonal behavior can be entirely neutral on dominance and warmth. Entirely neutral interpersonal behavior might be appropriate for scientific communications, but, in my experience, even when scientists attempt to be neutral, their communications still come across as involving dominance and warmth. 

How is who ends up an author on a study, as well as the order, determined? Hopefully largely by who contributed and how much--but those authors affiliated somehow, and at least some of the time the order might be partially a result of dominance behavior rather than pure contribution. Standing up and speaking at a conference generally comes across as dominance behavior: So much the more so does asking a challenging question from the audience. When scientists get together at a conference and share a meal, they invariably spend some of their time puzzling through other people’s behavior, including dominance and warmth behavior. 

One could be indignant that warmth and dominance (also known as “politics”) gets in the way of science and scientific communication. It seems to me, though, that thinking “if only we could get rid of politics in science” is close to saying “if only we didn’t have to have humans doing science.” If you’re a scientist, particularly a young scientist, trying to figure out what in the world is going on when scientists communicate with each other, you might want to spend some time reading up on the interpersonal circumplex.

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Poll: Conservatives most likely to be offended by holiday greetings

Key results: "Interestingly, the demographic groups most offended by “Happy Holidays” include strong conservatives (21 percent), Gary Johnson voters (20 percent), Trump supporters (18 percent) and all men (18 percent). These are the same groups of people that tend to say there is too much political correctness in society, yielding a paradox: The folks who complain the most about political correctness are the ones who are the most offended by what they see as “incorrect” speech."

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Candorville>> Livecasting His Reaction Videos

file under: technology and psychotherapy

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Crowd at a rally for love at Wash U. The students organized this, and the crowd just keeps getting bigger!

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When I think about it now, I realize that, yes, I did make a mistake. In the hour I had to write my article on Take Back the Night, I made the decision to include the comments of a student who would only call himself Chris. –Aimée Harris, a freshman in the College of the Liberal Arts and the Collegian’s diversity beat reporter.

(Note: Material at the end of link may not be appropriate for children, perhaps not those of refined sensibilities either–it’s from a college paper, after all.)

Today we discuss gender-sensitive therapies in class, and that brought to mind this incident from my past. I took part in the Take Back the Night march in 1997, then read with alarm and bemusement in the college paper the next morning an accusation that the marchers had been violent (and stupidly, ridiculously violent) toward men during the march. Having been there the whole time, I knew this hadn’t happened, so I wrote a letter to the editor that (in part) led to this apology/retraction: It didn’t happen, and shouldn’t have been reported.

Put together, the march plus this coda is possibly the most overtly feminist act I’ve taken part in, so it seems fitting to remember it today. 

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songs by david bowie featuring america and politics.

No comment on the election results, except that this is my playlist right now.

(If I missed any of David’s songs with America or politics, feel free to let me know.)