Social Support and Reduced Fear Acquisition

Official title

Can Social Support Figures Enhance Fear Extinction in Patients With Social Anxiety?

Overview

University of California, Los Angeles researchers will recruit healthy participants and anxious participants (those diagnosed with social anxiety disorder) age 18-55 years old to participate in a study examining whether the ability of social support figure reminders to prevent the acquisition of fear in healthy participants extends to those with anxiety disorders. After being recruited from the UCLA community (healthy participants, n = 50) or referred by treatment providers at the Anxiety and Depression Research Center at UCLA (anxious participants, n =50) and undergoing a telephone screening and in-person screening, 100 participants will be enrolled in the study. During the experiment, all participants will undergo the same procedures: undergoing fear acquisition procedures--the repeated pairing of a neutral image with a mild electric shock that ultimately leads to the association of threat of shock with the image--in the presence of an image of a social support figure (provided by participants) and an image of a smiling stranger.

Interventions

• Behavioral Social support image
  An image of a social support figure specific to each participant (provided by the participant) will be present while participants undergo a fear acquisition procedure. Specifically--the image will be presented alongside a neutral image that is either consistently paired with shock (CS+) or never paired with shock (CS-), so that assessment of whether there are differences in fear responding (evaluated via SCR) due the shock pairing can be assessed. This is a typical fear acquisition procedure, an

Primary outcome measures

• Fear response during acquisition indicated by elevated Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) [Time frame: during acquisition procedure]
• Fear response post-acquisition indicated by elevated GSR [Time frame: same session - directly post-acquisition (approximately 5 minutes post procedure)]

Eligibility criteria

Inclusion criteria

• healthy adults 18 and 35
• fluent in English
• no history of mental illness (healthy participants: including anxiety, depression, phobia, or any other mental health related disorder diagnosed by a mental health professional)
• diagnosis of social anxiety disorder (anxious participants: allowed co-morbid disorders include depression, other anxiety disorders, and PTSD)

Exclusion criteria

• pregnant or planning to become pregnant during the experiment period
• presence of chronic mental illness (healthy participants: as determined by the report of a past diagnosis of mental illness by a physician or psychologist and/or the prescription of medication related to mental health disorder; including anxiety, depression, phobia, or any other diagnosed psychological disorder)
• presence of non-allowed co-morbid disorders (anxious participants: including, bipolar disorder, psychosis, substance use disorder, neurological disorder, and/or obsessive-compulsive disorder)
• current and regular use of prescription medications related to mental health disorders

Criteria are shown verbatim from the registry (in English). Final eligibility is always assessed by the study center.

Healthy volunteers: Yes

Study design

Allocation

N/A

Model

Single group

Masking

Open label

Primary purpose

Basic science

Study locations

United States · 1 center

• UCLA Department of Psychology — Los Angeles

Identifiers

NCT: NCT04564976 · SSA

Primary sources (government registries)

• ClinicalTrials.gov (US NIH)

View this study on ClinicalTrials.gov ↗