Trial reportBehaviour research and therapy2016
The power of positive thinking: Pathological worry is reduced by thought replacement in Generalized Anxiety Disorder.
Trial report in Behaviour research and therapy, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 69 citations in OpenAlex.
- The Effectiveness of a Digital App for Reduction of Clinical Symptoms in Individuals With Panic Disorder: Randomized Controlled Trial.Journal of medical Internet research · 2024Trial
- Mediating effect of fear of happiness between intolerance of uncertainty and anxiety among Lebanese adults.Global mental health (Cambridge, England) · 2026Article
- Feed, Read, and Grow: An Observational Study on the Impact of Educational Videos About Pediatric Anxiety.Cureus · 2025Article
- Co-Designed Online Training Program for Worry Management: The Role of Young People With Lived Experience of Worry in Program Development.JMIR formative research · 2025Article
- Christmas Break: Predictive Value of Holiday Avian Wishbone Traditions Among Frontline Healthcare Workers in a Prospective Trial.Risk management and healthcare policy · 2025Article
- Knowledge and Attitude towards Clinical Trials among General Population of Northern Saudi Arabia during COVID-19 Era: A Cross-Sectional Study.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Neural correlates of mindful disengagement from worry.Journal of psychopathology and clinical science · 2023Article
- Escaping from worries: Comparing the effectiveness of focusing on one's breath, a neutral and a positive distractor in worry control.Current psychology (New Brunswick, N.J.) · 2022Article
- Adverse childhood experiences, daily worries, and positive thoughts: A daily diary multi-wave study.The British journal of clinical psychology · 2018Article
- Factors influencing health self-management in adherence to care and treatment among the recipients of liver transplantation.Patient preference and adherence · 2018Article
- Innovations in digital interventions for psychological trauma: harnessing advances in cognitive science.mHealth · 2018Review
- Delineating the Role of Negative Verbal Thinking in Promoting Worry, Perceived Threat, and Anxiety.Clinical psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2015Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Worry in Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), takes a predominantly verbal form, as if talking to oneself about possible negative outcomes. The current study examined alternative approaches to reducing worry by allocating volunteers with GAD to conditions in which they either practiced replacing the usual form of worry with images of possible positive outcomes, or with the same positive outcomes represented verbally. A comparison control condition involved generating positive images not related to worries. Participants received training in the designated method and then practiced it for one week, before attending for reassessment, and completing follow-up questionnaires four weeks later. All groups benefited from training, with decreases in anxiety and worry, and no significant differences between groups. The replacement of worry with different forms of positive ideation, even when unrelated to the content of worry itself, seems to have similar beneficial effects, suggesting that any form of positive ideation can be used to effectively counter worry.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.