TY - JOUR

T1 - Efficacy of cognitive bias modification interventions in anxiety and depression

T2 - meta-analysis

AU - Cristea, Ioana A.

AU - Kok, Robin N.

AU - Cuijpers, Pim

PY - 2015/1/1

Y1 - 2015/1/1

N2 - Background Cognitive bias modification (CBM) interventions are strongly advocated in research and clinical practice.Aims To examine the efficiency of CBM for clinically relevant outcomes, along with study quality, publication bias and potential moderators.Method We included randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of CBM interventions that reported clinically relevant outcomes assessed with standardised instruments.Results We identified 49 trials and grouped outcomes into anxiety and depression. Effect sizes were small considering all the samples, and mostly non-significant for patient samples. Effect sizes became non-significant when outliers were excluded and after adjustment for publication bias. The quality of the RCTs was suboptimal.Conclusions CBM may have small effects on mental health problems, but it is also very well possible that there are no significant clinically relevant effects. Research in this field is hampered by small and low-quality trials, and by risk of publication bias. Many positive outcomes are driven by extreme outliers.

AB - Background Cognitive bias modification (CBM) interventions are strongly advocated in research and clinical practice.Aims To examine the efficiency of CBM for clinically relevant outcomes, along with study quality, publication bias and potential moderators.Method We included randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of CBM interventions that reported clinically relevant outcomes assessed with standardised instruments.Results We identified 49 trials and grouped outcomes into anxiety and depression. Effect sizes were small considering all the samples, and mostly non-significant for patient samples. Effect sizes became non-significant when outliers were excluded and after adjustment for publication bias. The quality of the RCTs was suboptimal.Conclusions CBM may have small effects on mental health problems, but it is also very well possible that there are no significant clinically relevant effects. Research in this field is hampered by small and low-quality trials, and by risk of publication bias. Many positive outcomes are driven by extreme outliers.

KW - Psychology

KW - anxiety disorder

KW - clinical effectiveness

KW - cognitive bias

KW - cognitive therapy

KW - depression

KW - psychosocial care

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84920398422&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1192/bjp.bp.114.146761

DO - 10.1192/bjp.bp.114.146761

M3 - Scientific review articles

C2 - 25561486

VL - 206

SP - 7

EP - 16

JO - The British Journal of Psychiatry

JF - The British Journal of Psychiatry

SN - 0007-1250

IS - 1

ER -