2 results
Does the unified protocol really change neuroticism? Results from a randomized trial
- Shannon Sauer-Zavala, Jay C. Fournier, Stephanie Jarvi Steele, Brittany K. Woods, Mengxing Wang, Todd J. Farchione, David H. Barlow
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- Journal:
- Psychological Medicine / Volume 51 / Issue 14 / October 2021
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 21 April 2020, pp. 2378-2387
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- Article
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Background
Neuroticism is associated with the onset and maintenance of a number of mental health conditions, as well as a number of deleterious outcomes (e.g. physical health problems, higher divorce rates, lost productivity, and increased treatment seeking); thus, the consideration of whether this trait can be addressed in treatment is warranted. To date, outcome research has yielded mixed results regarding neuroticism's responsiveness to treatment, perhaps due to the fact that study interventions are typically designed to target disorder symptoms rather than neuroticism itself. The purpose of the current study was to explore whether a course of treatment with the unified protocol (UP), a transdiagnostic intervention that was explicitly developed to target neuroticism, results in greater reductions in neuroticism compared to gold-standard, symptom focused cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) protocols and a waitlist (WL) control condition.
MethodPatients with principal anxiety disorders (N = 223) were included in this study. They completed a validated self-report measure of neuroticism, as well as clinician-rated measures of psychological symptoms.
ResultsAt week 16, participants in the UP condition exhibited significantly lower levels of neuroticism than participants in the symptom-focused CBT (t(218) = −2.17, p = 0.03, d = −0.32) and WL conditions(t(207) = −2.33, p = 0.02, d = −0.43), and these group differences remained after controlling for simultaneous fluctuations in depression and anxiety symptoms.
ConclusionsTreatment effects on neuroticism may be most robust when this trait is explicitly targeted.
15 - Critics on August Wilson
- Christopher Bigsby, University of East Anglia
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- Book:
- The Cambridge Companion to August Wilson
- Published online:
- 28 January 2008
- Print publication:
- 29 November 2007, pp 193-201
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- Chapter
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Summary
The only research I do is to listen to the music. There's a lot of history of our people in the music. When I was writing Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, I didn't want to know anything about Ma Rainey. I figured what I needed to know I'd get out of her music. Listening to her singing gave me a good sense of who she was . . . When I did Joe Turner's Come and Gone, I certainly did not think about anything that happened in 1911, but I had a sense that they didn't have cars but had horses. And I envisioned people coming into the cities, and there were boarding houses and people setting down roots. I believe if you do research, you're limited by it . . . It's like putting on a straitjacket.
August WilsonIt is not for nothing that Harry J. Elam, Jr.'s 2004 book is entitled The Past as Present in the Drama of August Wilson, in that it acknowledges the extent to which Wilson's plays, set in the past, nonetheless address current concerns. Wilson may not have been interested in conducting historical research but he was concerned to trace the history of individual lives and the unfolding story of the African American community in such a way that present attitudes and values are seen in the context of past experiences.
Some critics have chosen to treat the plays as if they were written in the era in which they are set. So, for example, a number of articles approach Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (1984) in terms of the history of the blues (Adell, Crawford, Gener, Mills, Plum, Smith, Snodgrass, Taylor), or jazz (Hay, Werner, Wolfe); the Great Migration (Anderson, Bogumil, Gates, Pereira, Shannon 'Transplant'); the conflicting views of African spirituality versus African American Christianity (Richards, Shannon 'Good Christian'); patriarchal roles (Brewer, Clark, Hampton, Sterling); women's roles (Elam 'Women', Kubitschek, Marra); 'Southernness' (Gantt) or 'folk traditions' (Harris).
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