The investigators are conducting a clinical trial of therapy for public speaking anxiety. There are many eligibility criteria, but the main ones are that participants need to be socially anxious and have public speaking anxiety. In this clinical trial, all participants will do exposure therapy. Before doing exposure therapy in the study, though, participants will be randomized to do one of two treatments: i) a positive mood treatment, which is designed to increase how positive people feel, and ii) a relaxation treatment, which is designed to help people feel more relaxed. The investigators are doing this study to see whether doing the positive mood treatment or relaxation treatment first will affect how well exposure therapy works.
Diagnosis of social anxiety disorder from the Structural Clinical Interview for DSM 5.
Elevated fear of public speaking, defined as a score of >= 66 (+1SD from the mean of population norms on a scale of 17-85) on the Public Speaking Anxiety Scale (PSAS; Bartholomay, E. M., & Houlihan, D. D. (2016). Public Speaking Anxiety Scale: Preliminary psychometric data and scale validation. Personality and individual differences, 94, 211-215), which is a self-report scale measuring anxiety of public speaking.
Low reward processing, defined as a score of <56 (less than the population mean) on the Dimensional Anhedonia Rating Scale (DARS) (Rizvi, S. J., Quilty, L. C., Sproule, B. A., Cyriac, A., Bagby, R. M., & Kennedy, S. H. (2015). Dimensional Anhedonia Rating Scale (DARS) [Database record]. APA PsycTests).
Medication-free or stabilized on psychotropic medications for a minimum standard length of time (1 month for benzodiazepines and beta blockers, 3 months for SRIs/SNRIs and heterocyclics).
Recent suicidal ideation with intent or plan - defined as suicidal ideation with intent or plan in the past year.
Lifetime history of suicide attempts.
History of bipolar disorder, psychosis, intellectual disability, or organic brain damage.
Substance use disorder within the last 6 months.
University of California, Los Angeles
Lead sponsor
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
Collaborator