Cognitive-behavioural treatment for excessive worry in older adults

This cuasi experiment analyze the effectiveness of a psycho-educative program aimed to reduce excessive worry among older people, through discussion sessions and training in problem solving, muscle relaxation, stimulus control and the modification of beliefs about worry. Seventeen persons between 55 and 80 years old participated in 8 weekly sessions of 90 minutes and other 24 subjects composed the control group. Trait-worry, severity of generalized anxiety and metaworry were the assessed dependent variables. There were not differences between groups in the pre scores, neither in demographics. In the post scores, experimental group had significantly lower scores in trait worry and in the severity of generalized anxiety, but not in metaworry. The between-groups effect size was high for trait-worry (d =.75), acceptable for severity of generalized anxiety (d =.59) and small for metaworry (d =.25). The within-groups effect sizes and the percentage of change were, however, high for all of measures in the experimental group and almost null in the control group, so we can point out that the program is effective for the reduction of excessive worry in older adults.