Comparing the effectiveness of pharmacotherapy (paroxetine), modular cognitive-‎ behavioral therapy ‎‌‌and their combination in distress tolerance, ambiguity tolerance and meta-worry‎ in female university students with generalized anxiety disorder

In the last two decades, the interest in understanding the nature of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and the development of effective treatment methods for GAD has increased among psychologists. This study aimed to compare the effectiveness of pharmacotherapy, modular cognitive-behavioral therapy and their combination in distress tolerance, ambiguity tolerance and meta-worry in female students with generalized anxiety.

This study was a semi-experimental research with a pretest-posttest and follow-up control group design. The selection of 60 students among the female students of the Islamic Azad University of Mashhad was done by purposive sampling and were randomly assigned into three experimental groups (pharmacotherapy, modular therapy and combination therapy) and a control group. The participants were pretested using Generalized Anxiety Disorder Questionnaire (GAD-7; Spitzer et al., 2006) Wells ,Anxious Thoughts Inventory (2005), Simmons and Gahr turbulence tolerance scale (2005) and McDonald Ambiguity Tolerance Scale (1970). At the end of the treatment and three months after it, participants underwent post-test and follow-up test. The data in this article was analysed with repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA).

The results of the repeated measures ANOVA showed that all three treatment approaches were effective in reducing turbulence tolerance, ambiguity tolerance and meta-worry compared to the control group (Eta-squared 0.37, 0.22, 0.45, respectively), but combination therapy had a significant advantage over the other two therapeutic approaches alone (p <0.05).

Based on the biological and psychological underpinnings of generalized anxiety disorder, it seems that the combination of psychological therapies and pharmacotherapy is a more effective approach in improving anxiety conditions.