Active clinical trials for "Phobic Disorders"

Anxiety disorders are characterized by exaggerated levels of fear that are not proportional to the actual level of threat. More specifically, anxiety patients have marked deficits in the downregulation of fear reactions during situations of objective safety. Pre-clinical research on Pavlovian fear conditioning and extinction has discovered that fear downregulation stems from areas in the prefrontal cortex (the ventro-medial prefrontal cortex, vmPFC) that recruit intercalated cells in the amygdala to inhibit its central nucleus, which is responsible for a variety of behavioral expressions of fear (Milad & Quirk, 2012). Accordingly, functional magnetic resonance imaging studies (fMRI) revealed reduced vmPFC activity coupled with increased fear reactions during situations of objective safety in anxiety patients (Milad et al., 2009). Another core symptom of anxiety disorders, though much less investigated, is the excessive avoidance of situations that trigger the fears. These 'safety behaviors' often interfere with daily life activities and valued goals in life, and they are thought to perpetuate the exaggerated levels of fear by precluding opportunities to learn that the feared situations are actually not dangerous. Surprisingly, experimental research on avoidance behaviors in anxiety patients is virtually non-existent. This experiment modifies the Pavlovian fear conditioning procedure to include avoidance, and explores the behavioral and neural processes of this type of fear regulation in anxiety patients (trans-diagnostically) and healthy individuals.

We plan to study patient who faint in response to the sight of blood and compare them to healthy subjects who do not. We are going to use a special type of MRI scan (functional MRI) to determine if there are differences in brain activation in response to seeing bloody or gory pictures that occur before the fainting occurs.

Context: Psychiatric disorders (anorexia nervosa, depression, anxiety based school refusal) are a major public health concern in adolescence. Their treatment is a challenge for the families, the health care system and society. The treatment is complex and non-standardized. In clinical practice, the relational dimension between the stakeholders is recognized by all. Nevertheless no study has ever crossed their perspectives about therapeutic alliance in adolescent psychiatry. Objective: to explore, within a qualitative approach, how a therapeutic alliance is established in three different clinical situations according to the adolescents, their parents and their physicians by crossing their perspectives. Methods: This is a national (France) multi-center qualitative study based on 180 semi-structured interviews. Participants (purposively selected until data saturation) came from three different sub-samples: (i) adolescents with anorexia nervosa (N =20) plus their parents (N=20) and their physicians (N=20), (ii) adolescents with depressions (N=20) plus their parents (N=20) and their physicians (N=20), and (iii) adolescents with anxiety-based school refusal (N=20) plus their parents (N=20) and their physicians (N=20). Data are collected through open ended semi structured interviews and independently analyzed with NVivo V.11 software by three researchers according to the principles of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis.