Injection phobia is a prevalent anxiety disorder that puts youth at risk for adverse health outcomes. There is a need to develop accessible, timely, and effective treatments for injection phobia. Combining telehealth and intensive treatment approaches is a promising new direction for the treatment of youth injection phobia as it could address common accessibility barriers and help youth return to healthier functioning more quickly. In addition to testing a telehealth-delivered, intensive treatment for youth injection phobia, this dissertation project includes a critical review of measures of cognitive biases, which have been proposed to contribute to and maintain anxiety disorders.
Chapter 1 presents the results of a novel telehealth-delivered, intensive treatment for youth injection phobia. The study used a multiple baseline design to investigate the acceptability, feasibility, and preliminary efficacy of this intervention in 11 youth with injection phobia (Mage=12.5). I hypothesized that the intervention would be rated as feasible and acceptable, and that youth participants would show significant reductions in injection fear and avoidance following treatment. These hypotheses were supported by the study’s results.
Chapter 2 is a case series report that describes how the novel telehealth-delivered, intensive treatment for youth injection phobia was tailored to address factors (i.e., attentional difficulties low motivation, and high clinical acuity) that can interfere with the appropriateness and efficacy of telehealth treatment. Clinical implications are then discussed.
Chapter 3 provides a comprehensive review of measures commonly utilized to quantify attentional, interpretation, and memory biases in anxious samples. In this review, I highlight how the psychometric and theoretical shortcomings of current measures limit the field’s ability to accurately capture cognitive biases, and in turn, the nuanced relationship between cognitive biases and anxiety symptoms. I also detail specific measurement considerations that can help guide future research focused on anxiety-linked cognitive biases.
Overall, this project 1) demonstrates that a combined telehealth-delivered and intensive treatment approach appears to be a viable and effective delivery format for treating youth injection phobia and 2) provides recommendations for how to improve the measurement of cognitive biases so as to enhance our understanding of the etiology of youth anxiety disorders. / 2026-10-02
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/49371 |
| Date | 02 October 2024 |
| Creators | Fenley, Alicia R. |
| Contributors | Pincus, Donna, Langer, David |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
Page generated in 0.0021 seconds