Introduction:
Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is a common form of anxiety disorder. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs), and benzodiazepines (BZs) are the most commonly prescribed medications for GAD, but little is known about the relative efficacy of these pharmacological treatments.
Areas Covered:
This study provides a meta-analytic review of the efficacy of these medications in the treatment of adults with GAD.A comprehensive literature search yielded 54 articles reporting 56 unique studies with 12,655 participants treated with either pill placebo (6,191 participants), SSRIs (16 trials, 2,712 participants), SNRIs (17 trials, 2,603 participants), or BZs (23 trials, 1,149 participants). The overall combined effect size was modest to moderate (Hedges’ g = 0.37, p< 0.0001). Effect sizes decreased significantly over time. SSRIs (Hedges’ g = 0.33) and SNRIs (Hedges’ g = 0.36) demonstrated significantly lower effect sizes than BZs (Hedges’ g = 0.50).
Expert opinion:
These findings were not due to differences in treatment length or publication year. The results of this study suggest that the most common forms of pharmacotherapy for adult GAD are moderately effective, with BZs being the most effective drug.
A staple theme in clinical psychology, emotion regulation, or the ability to manage one's emotions, is directly linked with personal wellbeing and the ability to effectively navigate the social world. Until recently, this concept has been limited to a focus on intrapersonal processes, such as suppression. Less emphasis has been placed on developmental, social, and cultural aspects of emotion regulation. We argue here that as social beings, our engagement in emotion regulation may often occur interpersonally, with trusted others helping us to regulate our emotions. This review will highlight recent research on interpersonal emotion regulation processes.
Electronic feedback given via word-processing software (e.g., track changes in Microsoft Word) allows for a simple way to provide feedback to students during the drafting process. Research has mostly focused on student attitudes toward electronic feedback, with little investigation of how feedback format might affect the quality of instructor comments. In this study, we experimentally manipulated the feedback format, either electronic or handwritten, used by instructors grading papers in an introductory research methods course. Among the effects observed, instructors using electronic feedback provided longer comments, were less likely to rewrite student passages and were more likely to offer general observations about the writing. Students whose papers were graded using electronic feedback also showed greater improvement on subsequent drafts.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.