The impact of sex hormones on one-session cognitive therapy for women with spider phobia. .

One-session cognitive intervention One-session cognitive intervention for spider phobia is a brief intervention, delivered in a single session and taking between 30-45-mins. It begins with a description of the cognitive model. The relationship between thinking and feeling is demonstrated using an example of a women hearing a loud noise in the night. Participants are provided with a thought monitoring form that consists of three columns: situation (A); belief (B) and consequence (C). With the clinicians assistance participants complete the form demonstrating that emotional and behavioural consequences (column C) are dependent on beliefs (column B) in any given situation. Participants that demonstrate a lack of understanding regarding the relationship between thinking and feeling are provided with another example. Using the same form catastrophic beliefs regarding spiders are then identified (e.g., what goes through your head when you see a live spider? How do you feel and what do you do?) and challenged using cognitive challenging techniques. To assist in challenging beliefs participants are given a Spider Fact Sheet, which contains factual information about spiders, their behaviour and the level of threat they pose to humans. A clinical psychologist with 8 years experience in providing cognitive-behavioural therapy to people with anxiety disorders will deliver the intervention face to face to each participant individually. Participants will receive the intervention at the UNSW Psychology Clinic. A clinical psychologist that is blind to the participants’ group and independent from the study will assess intervention adherence via video recordings of the sessions. Feedback regarding good adherence or failure to adhere to the intervention protocol will be provided to maintain or improve fidelity.