NCT03105024

Self-efficacy Enhancement and Exposure Therapy

Enhancing Exposure: the Impact of Self-efficacy Enhancement on Treatment Outcome

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 71 (actual)
• Sponsor: Ruhr University of Bochum · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years – 38 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

Self-efficacy refers to the perceived belief to cope effectively, by personal efforts, with challenging situations and problems (Bandura, 1977). Basic research has shown that increases in perceived self-efficacy can enhance the extinction of fear (Zlomuzica et al., 2015). This study is aimed at translating these findings into a useful clinical application to augment exposure-based treatment outcome.

Detailed description

In this study, the effects of self-efficacy enhancement on treatment outcome in patients with height phobia will be investigated. Participants will be randomly assigned to one of the following conditions: i) virtual reality exposure + self-efficacy enhancement; ii) virtual reality exposure + control intervention; iii) virtual reality exposure only. The amount of exposure is identical across groups (i.e. maximum of 1 hour of exposure). The self-efficacy and the control intervention involve the retrieval of the exposure session with or without a focus on personal mastery experiences/achievements, respectively. Treatment-induced changes as well as the effects of self-efficacy enhancement will be measured on the subjective level (i.e. in-vivo Behavioral Approach Tests, BATs; church tower), physiological level (heart rate during the BATs), and subjective level (subjective fear during the BATs as well as height-phobia related questionnaires) at each of the three assessments (i.e. pretreatment, after which the exposure will conducted on the same day, i.e. day 1; posttreatment, which is scheduled approximately 2-3 days after exposure, and follow-up assessment, which will take place 1-month after exposure).

Conditions

• Specific Phobia

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	Self-efficacy enhancement	specific instructions regarding the retrieval of mastery experiences during exposure will be given (e.g., pointing out discrepancies between expected negative consequences and actual outcome during exposure; focus on achievements)
OTHER	Control intervention	specific instructions regarding the retrieval of the exposure session will be given without an emphasis on personal mastery experience (e.g., description of details regarding the virtual reality environment)

Timeline

• Start date: 2017-03-22
• Primary completion: 2017-11-29
• Completion: 2017-11-29
• First posted: 2017-04-07
• Last updated: 2018-04-11

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Germany