Previous studies have indicated that childhood maltreatment (CM) was associated with difficulty in emotion regulation and potentially influenced the symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). In this case, the patient experienced CM and had the personality of expressive suppression, even if she felt stress from others. During adulthood, a stressful task at work led to the onset of OCD with a harm obsession for others. When she was alone at home, the OCD was so severe that she reduced movement as much as possible. Cognitive behavioral therapy was provided to her through remote treatments that mainly used voice calls at her home. This method had the advantage that the therapist could treat the patient while she was in a place where obsessive–compulsive symptoms appeared, and her symptoms were alleviated. This study examined the CM experience and its impact on her thoughts and OCD.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of a telehealth program to teach social communication skills to a preschool child with a developmental disorder. An online developmental and behavioral intervention program was developed and adapted for a preschool child and his mother. All tasks were assigned to the mother via an internet-enabled tablet PC. The experimenter evaluated the performance of the child once a week using online conference system. We conducted a semi-structured interview with the mother to determine the target social communication skills, all of which were verbal behavior. This program targeted social communication with three groups of people: family members, teachers and friends. The program materials for each group included 12 social situations. Multiple baseline across tasks design was used. After completing the program, the correct response rates increased in all tasks. At the one-month follow up, the mother reported that her child’s engagement and correct responses were maintained.

The purpose of this study was to implement a group intervention, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), with three patients with chronic stage schizophrenia to examine the effects of the intervention program. The intervention consisted of a total of six sessions, four program and two follow-up sessions, and a single-case design was used to measure the frequency of occurrence of value-directed behaviors as an outcome measure, and VQ, CFQ, and BEAQ as process measures. We found a significant increase (p＜.05) in the frequency of occurrence of the outcome measure, value-directed behavior, for all three participants (Tau＝0.43 to 0.53). Process measures tended to be significant during the intervention in the visual analysis and tended to return to baseline levels after the intervention, with only the VQ (progress factor) of one participant being significant (Tau＝0.69). In conclusion, the group ACT program is effective in promoting value-directed behavior in schizophrenia as recovery support for each individual, and it is necessary to further examine the stepwise intervention method for generalization and maintenance of behavior after the intervention.

This study created an attention training technique (ATT) with sound stimuli that induced self-focused attention (SFA) and compared the effects with a standard ATT. We recruited and assigned a total of 30 undergraduate students with social anxiety tendencies to the SFA-ATT and standard ATT groups. Each ATT was performed for two weeks and the changes in social anxiety, attention control function, SFA, and post-event processing (PEP) were examined. Although the fear of social situations decreased in both groups, the diminution level in the SFA-ATT group was larger compared to the standard ATT group. The observer perspective during the speech task decreased in both groups, and there was no difference in the change between the groups. The PEP decreased only in the SFA-ATT group. Overall, SFA-ATT had a larger effect on social anxiety disorder symptoms and PEP than the standard ATT. However, further research on the differences between the mechanisms of the SFA-ATT and standard ATT is required.

Even though alcohol addiction is a major social problem, there are few specialized treatment facilities to treat it. Therefore, we developed the Restart and Enhancing Life Intervention for Every Person with Alcohol Addiction (RELIFE-A²) program as a group cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) program that can be easily implemented by those with minimal experience in treating alcohol addiction, and conducted a pilot study. We compared three groups: a control group with 14 people who received standard group CBT, an expert group with 12 people who received RELIFE-A² from those experienced in addiction treatment, and an amateur group with 12 people who received RELIFE-A² from those with minimal experience in addiction treatment. The outcome measures, which included relapse risk, psychological well-being, self-efficacy, motivation for drinking problems, and coping skills, were analyzed using a linear mixed model. The results of the intervention revealed that timing played a key role in relapse risk, motivation, and coping skills, but there was no significant difference between the groups. Therefore, RELIFE-A² was judged to be as effective as a standard group CBT program. In addition, the usability of the program was checked, and it was found that the program could be implemented even by medical staff with minimal knowledge of addiction.

This study aimed to conduct a preliminary comparison and examine the effects of cognitive behavioral group therapy based on a unified protocol of cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety and depression (GUPPY) and cognitive behavioral therapy for depression (CBGT-D). Psychiatric outpatients who agreed to participate in the study were assigned to two groups, GUPPY (n＝10) and CBGT-D (n＝14). They were analyzed based on the differences in the improvement of their psychiatric symptoms and quality of life (QOL). The results showed that the main effect of time and the interaction between time and the group were significant in depression, with a significant improvement in the GUPPY group. There was also a significant trend towards a small to moderate improvement in the CBGT-D group. However, there was a large difference in depression scores between the two groups at the beginning, which may have affected the degree of improvement. The terminology used in the CBGT-D program was rated as easier to understand compared to the GUPPY group. Further improvements in GUPPY are desired.

Limited evidence has shown how the therapeutic effects of psychotherapies have been obtained compared to abundant evidence based on the changes in the clinical outcome scores. Psychotherapy depends on interactive therapeutic conversations. Hence, topic models have recently attracted attention for linguistic information as data-driven computational approaches can produce objective and reproducible models. This study examined whether a dynamic topic model with a time-series structure could extract treatment session content from single-case conversation data during a structured behavioral activation program. We extracted four potential topics during the treatment sessions. The quantitative transition process reflected the program treatment contents. This is the first study to apply the dynamic topic model for conversation during psychotherapy, which quantifies the actual treatment process. The results show cumulative evidence of the effects of psychotherapy.

This study examined the use of an integrated behavior assessment-based support to shape the speech behavior of an eighth-grade female student with selective mutism. The student’s stress response at school appeared to be the causal factor for her condition, and instances of peers who spoke on her behalf and a teacher who communicated with her in writing seemed to sustain it. Therefore, to reduce her stress response at school, a support stage was established based on the anxiety hierarchy confirmed by salivary α-amylase activity. Furthermore, prompt fading, systematic desensitization, in vivo systematic desensitization, and assertion training were carried out based on the degree of the stress response. We also intervened and removed the factors that maintained the student’s selective mutism from the school. After four sessions over ten months at a technical assistance institution and the school, the student’s selective mutism was eliminated, and her active speech behavior in class was shaped. Her prognosis was good. Therefore, this study suggested that the behavior assessment system applied for selective mutism was effective. The next challenge is to clarify the standards for applying the support techniques.

This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of a cognitive behavioral group therapy (CBGT) program based on relapse prevention in patients with gambling disorder, using gambling behavior and adaptation as outcome measures. A semi-open format CBGT program, which was highly flexible in terms of participation, which consisted of 13 sessions emphasized on functional analysis was implemented at a private medical institution for patients diagnosed with gambling disorder. The study included 21 patients who completed the questionnaire. The analysis revealed no significant decrease in gambling behavior. In addition, among the adaptation measures, although there was a reduction in the degree of life disruption caused by gambling, there was no significant improvement in the quality of life (QOL) or psychological stress response. These results suggest that the program still has some limitations that need to be addressed. Finally, the future perspectives are discussed.