The Norwegian Cardiac Exercise Research Group was established early in 2008 with funding from the Norwegian Research Council and other grant organizations. The work of their team of 36 research scientists "focuses on identifying the key cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying the beneficial effects of physical exercise on the heart, arteries and skeletal muscle in the context of disease prevention and management through experimental, clinical and epidemiological studies. Identifying the cellular and molecular mechanisms associated with aerobic fitness is important, because it may help us develop new and better methods to prevent and treat cardiovascular disease.  The relationship between physical activity and health can be studied by either top-down or bottom-up approaches.

I have been asked to write a column on "Keeping up with the literature" for CBT Today "the official magazine of the British Association for Behavioural & Cognitive Psychotherapies".  I sent in a first copy a couple of months ago, but unfortunately the editors couldn't get the space to squeeze it in.  Today's post is an extension of that first copy, with several additions to the original publications that were initially recommended.  As before, I thought it might be helpful to put an online version onto this website so that I can include relevant hyperlinks to the various research articles that I mention.

I have written three posts recently on Self-practice/Self-reflection (SP/SR) and cutting edge CBT for social anxiety disorder - the most recent went onto the website yesterday.  There is also a further associated post - "Assessment & monitoring questionnaires for CBT treatment of social anxiety disorder" - which gives ten or so relevant downloadable questionnaires & handouts.  I mentioned that David Clark suggested (at the workshop I attended with him) that there are "five treatment innovations" in his approach to social phobia treatment - 1.) self-focused attention & safety behaviours experiments; 2.) video (and still) feedback; 3.) atten

I have recently written a series of three blog posts on David Clark's very impressive cognitive therapy treatment for social anxiety disorder.  One of the posts is very practical, giving ten or so relevant downloadable questionnaires & handouts - see "Assessment & monitoring questionnaires for CBT treatment of social anxiety disorder".  The other two are the first pair of posts in a more extended sequence - "Self-practice, Self-reflection (SP/SR) & David Clark's treatment for social anxiety: introduction (1st post)" and

Common sense on improving outcomes:  It only takes a little reflection to realise that, if we want to become more successful at doing something, it’s likely to help immensely if we know where we’re starting and can track if we’re improving or not.  The research literature is very clear about the importance of this approach – see, for example, the major text book “Development of professional expertise: Toward measurement of expert performance and design of optimal learning environments” – but common sense already makes this pretty obvious.  Imagine that we are trying to improve our skills at playing darts.

I read a lot of research. When I find an article of particular interest I download it to my bibliographic database - EndNote - which currently contains over 20,400 abstracts.

The Scottish branch of the British Association for Behavioural & Cognitive Psychotherapies (BABCP) organized a two day autumn conference over the 12th & 13th of September on "Current trends in CBT".  Interestingly what was on offer consisted almost entirely of workshops (apart from one brief symposium on the first evening).  On the first day Avinash Bansode gave a workshop on "MBCT" and John Swann taught on

I went to a workshop on the treatment of social anxiety disorder with David Clark in July.  It was very helpful.  I've listed assessment & monitoring questionnaires that he recommended below:

As a general measure to assess and track changes in social anxiety severity, the freely available Social Phobia Inventory (SPIN) is the questionnaire recommended by the England & Wales NHS Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) "outcomes toolkit".  Interestingly David seems to prefer the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS) probably because it makes a pretty full job of assessing both anxiety and avoidance.  

Yesterday I wrote an introductory post on using self-practice & self-reflection (SP/SR) to improve my understanding of David Clark's treatment for social anxiety.  In today's post I want to look at assessment - of social anxiety disorder, of skill with Clark's CBT approach, and at SP/SR initiation.

Self-practice/Self-reflection (SP/SR) is an approach to training in cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) that involves practising CBT methods on oneself (self-practice - SP) and then reflecting on what one can learn from this experience (self-reflection - SR).  SP/SR is at the interface between more standard training approaches (such as lectures, videos, role plays) and personal therapy (recommended as part of therapist training by many - particularly non CBT - psychotherapy schools).  In the current draft copy of their "Self-practice/self-reflection workbook", authors James Bennett-Levy, Richard Thwaites, Beverly Haarhoff & Helen Perry write "While the primary focus of personal therapy is on personal development, the rationale and purpose of SP/SR is to use your personal experience of CBT to develop better understanding and use of CBT with pati