A Transdiagnostic Treatment for Anxiety & Emotional Disorders: The Unified Protocol

Recent conceptualizations of anxiety, depressive, trauma-related and other “emotional” disorders emphasize their similarities rather than their differences. In response, there has been a movement away from traditional disorder-specific interventions toward treatment approaches focused on addressing core psychological processes that cut across these disorders. These “transdiagnostic” treatments also address co-occurring emotional disorders, which is the norm rather than the exception, and have the potential to increase the availability of evidence-based treatments to meet a significant public h...Read moreealth need. The Unified Protocol for Transdiagnostic Treatment of Emotional Disorders (Barlow et al., 2018; UP), has accumulated substantial empirical support for its use. The UP is an emotion-focused cognitive-behavioral treatment (CBT) that targets core temperamental characteristics, particularly, but not limited to, neuroticism occurring across what used to be called the “neurotic spectrum” (e.g., anxiety, depressive, dissociative, and related disorders).

This introductory workshop will first briefly discuss the rationale for a transdiagnostic approach to treatment and review evidence supporting the UP. This will be followed by a description and demonstration of how to apply core UP treatment modules, along with the similarities and differences between the UP and traditional CBT. Audio and videotaped illustrations of core treatment interventions (e.g., mindful awareness, emotion exposures) will be presented and attendees will be invited to participate in exercises as part of these demonstrations. Less...

Learning Objectives

• Define core temperamental characteristics and deficits in emotion regulation underlying all anxiety, depressive, and related disorders and conceptualize a case from the UP’s transdiagnostic framework
• Create a treatment plan and apply the UP’s 5 core emotion-focused treatment strategies (increasing mindful emotion awareness, fostering cognitive flexibility, identifying and reducing patterns of emotion avoidance, increasing awareness and tolerance of emotion-related physical sensations, and interoceptive and situational emotion-focused exposures) to patients presenting with comorbid emotional disorders.
• Create effective and cohesive emotion exposures for patients with anxiety, depression and complex comorbidities.

Thursday, June 10, 2021

09:00 AM EDT - 01:00 PM EDT