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Background: Generalized anxiety disorders (GAD) are amongst the most prevalent mental disorders. Recent studies have suggested that cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) is an effective treatment for GAD. A controlled clinical trial was done to evaluate the efficacy of CBT treatment in outpatients with pure GAD who were treated by a therapist working in routine care. Methods: Seventy-two outpatients, fulfilling GAD criteria according to DSM-IV, were included in the study. From this group, 36 patients (CBT-A) were randomly assigned to 25 sessions of CBT and the other 36 formed a contact control group (CCG). After the contact control period (CC period), these patients were also treated with CBT (CBT-B), allowing not only a parallel group comparison but also an A-B comparison. Therapists were licensed full-time psychologists who worked routinely in outpatient care and had a professional training in CBT. Treatment was done in accordance with a manual, and treatment conformity was controlled by several methods. Results: The reduction in the score on the Hamilton Anxiety Observer Rating Scale was 6.4% (1.5 points) in the CCG, 35.4% (9.5 points) in the CBT-A and 47.3% (10.3 points) in the CBT-B. In the self-rating Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, a reduction of 2.7% was seen in CCG, 14.6% in CBT-A, and 11.6% in CBT-B. According to the Clinical Global Impression Rating, 65.6% of patients were still at least moderately ill at the end of the CC period, while this rate was 33.4% at the end of CBT-A, or 15.7% at the end of CBT-B. All these differences between treatment and control group are statistically highly significant. The clinical improvement remained stable over a follow-up period of 8 months. Conclusions: CBT is an effective method of treatment for GAD. Differences between control and treatment group are comparable to or larger than those reported in studies on antidepressant drugs.

SummaryTheraplay® ist eine körpernahe Spieltherapie und bietet unter anderem beruhigende Rituale und anregende Spiele für das kindliche Nervensystem. Eine wichtige Ausgangsfrage der Theraplay-Begründerin Ann Jernberg ist: Was braucht das Kind, damit es ihm gut geht und es sich entwickeln kann? Anhand des Fallberichts demonstriert die Autorin, wie dem Kind Sicherheit vermittelt und es achtsam und spielerisch an die Beziehung und die therapeutische Situation herangeführt wird.

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Few issues are more important to security studies scholars than understanding how violent nonstate groups innovate. To shed new light on this subject, we examine Hezbollah's innovations and the underlying processes that produced them. Based on this case, the most successful violent non-state groups are arguably those that systematically pursue incremental innovation. Although less dramatic than their discontinuous counterparts, a commitment to steadily improve an organizations' tactics and techniques can have dramatic effects. Indeed, even Hezbollah's remarkable performance during the 2006 Lebanon War is attributable to the perfection of techniques utilized since the organization's inception. While innovations were incremental in character, a bottom-up process of learning and experimentation by field commanders was critical to generating most of these innovations. If generalizable to other violent non-state actors, these findings suggest that the most formidable insurgent and terrorist groups will actually be those that relentlessly pursue incremental innovations in a bottom-up fashion.

The changes that have taken place in the last decades in the United States armed forces approach to waging wars have attracted a lot of attention in the strategic community. For some, the use of information technology, unmanned weapon systems, and precisionguided munitions represent a "revolution in military affairs" (RMA). But while the characteristics of change perfectly fit the needs of other countries such as the major European powers, the alleged RMA is not a hot topic among European and especially German defense specialists. Only some aspects of the RMA have found their way into the German armed forces. Efforts to transform the German armed forces are hampered by political controversy and difficult cultural premises.

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