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Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for generalized anxiety disorder in older adults: a preliminary report
Julie Loebach Wetherell1, Niloofar Afari, Catherine R Ayers
1University of California, San Diego, Department of Psychiatry, La Jolla, CA 92093-9111, USA. jwetherell@ucsd.edu
Abstract:
Some evidence suggests that acceptance-based approaches such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) may be well-suited to geriatric generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). The primary goal of this project was to determine whether ACT was feasible for this population. Seven older primary-care patients with GAD received 12 individual sessions of ACT; another 9 were treated with cognitive-behavioral therapy. No patients dropped out of ACT, and worry and depression improved. Findings suggest that ACT may warrant a large-scale investigation with anxious older adults.
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