Deborah C. Beidel, Ph.D., ABPP is Pegasus Professor of Psychology and Medical Education and Director of UCF RESTORES at the University of Central Florida. She received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Pittsburgh and completed a post-doctoral fellowship in clinical research at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic. Dr. Beidel holds Diplomates in Clinical Psychology and Behavioral Psychology from the American Board of Professional Psychology and is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science. She is the author of over 250 scientific publications including journal articles, book chapters and books on the treatment of anxiety disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder and has been the recipient of over $19 million dollars in research funding throughout her career. Her recent work focuses on utilizing technology to translate and disseminate efficacious treatments for anxiety disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder into standard clinical practice. Currently, she is the principal investigator of a Department of Defense funded research program conducting a randomized controlled trial for the treatment of combat-related posttraumatic stress disorders, a Department of Defense funded research program examining familial stress during military deployment, and an NIMH funded randomized trial to develop artificially intelligent avatars to assist in the treatment of children with social anxiety disorders.
Behavioral and biological theories addressing the etiology of social anxiety disorder are discuss... more Behavioral and biological theories addressing the etiology of social anxiety disorder are discussed. Although not often diagnosed until adolescence or adulthood, social anxiety disorder can have its onset during childhood. Early recognition and treatment of this condition may prevent both immediate and long-term detrimental outcomes and, possibly, the onset of comorbid conditions. However, special considerations are required for the diagnosis and treatment of childhood social anxiety disorder. Therapists face special challenges when treating youth with social anxiety disorder, including patient and parent considerations. Although not documented specifically for children with social anxiety disorders, data from families with anxious children suggest that familial factors may play a role in treatment outcome.
Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 2004
In this study we examined the psychopathology and behavioral treatment of White and African Ameri... more In this study we examined the psychopathology and behavioral treatment of White and African American preadolescent children with social phobia. The comprehensive assessment strategy, including semistructured diagnostic interviews, clinician ratings of impairment, behavioral observations, parental ratings, and self-report inventories, did not reveal differences in symptomatic presentation between African American and White children. Whereas all children improved from pre- to posttreatment, there were no significant differences based on race. The results are discussed in terms of the applicability of models 0of social phobia and treatment outcome across these 2 ethnic groups.
Page 1. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 1988, Vol. °7, No. 1,80-82 Copyright 1988 by the American ... more Page 1. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 1988, Vol. °7, No. 1,80-82 Copyright 1988 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 002I-843X/88/S00.75 Psychophysiological Assessment of Anxious Emotional States in Children ...
... 1984 who (a) had received a primary DSM-III clinical diagnosis of either panic disorder or ag... more ... 1984 who (a) had received a primary DSM-III clinical diagnosis of either panic disorder or agoraphobia with panic attacks and (b) had completed at that time both the Fear Survey Schedule (FSS; Wolpe & Lang ... Boyd, JH, Burke, JD, Gruenberg, E., Holzer, CE Ill, Rae, DS, George. ...
... Seminars m Psychiatry, 3, 36-45. Christopherson, L. (1976). Cardiac transplantation need for ... more ... Seminars m Psychiatry, 3, 36-45. Christopherson, L. (1976). Cardiac transplantation need for patient counseling. ... I. Early assessment. Journal of Thoracic ami Cardiovascular Surgery, 84, 585-594. Simmons, RG, Kamstra-Hennen, L., & Thompson, CR (1981). ...
The use of attention training protocols for the treatment of generalized social anxiety disorder ... more The use of attention training protocols for the treatment of generalized social anxiety disorder (SAD) is undergoing increased examination. Initial investigations were positive but more recent investigations have been less supportive of the treatment paradigm. One significant limitation of current investigations is over-reliance on self-report. In this investigation, we expanded on initial investigations by using a multimodal assessment of patient functioning (i.e., including behavioral assessment). Patients with a primary diagnosis of SAD (n = 31) were randomly assigned to eight sessions of attention training (n = 15) or placebo/control (n = 16). Participants were assessed at pre- and post-treatment via self- and clinician-report of social anxiety as well as anxious and behavioral response to two in vivo social interactions. Results revealed no differences between groups at post-treatment for all study outcome variables, suggesting a lack of effect for the attention training condit...
Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics, 2015
Social anxiety disorder (SAD) in adolescents is considerably underdetected and undertreated despi... more Social anxiety disorder (SAD) in adolescents is considerably underdetected and undertreated despite the availability of efficacious treatments. Our main study objective was to examine brief, valid, and reliable screening measures for adolescent social anxiety, and to then conduct diagnostic interviews to evaluate the measures' ability to identify adolescents with SAD. We examined 7 brief and valid social anxiety measures and compared their diagnostic accuracy with diagnoses established by a semistructured interview. The sample included 421 Spanish adolescents with and 613 without a clinical diagnosis of SAD. Data revealed that short social anxiety measures are accurate in detecting Spanish-speaking socially anxious adolescents. All questionnaires showed good or excellent discriminating ability, with the Social Anxiety Scale for Adolescents (SAS-A) and the Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory-Brief (SPAI-B) having the best sensitivity and specificity values, respectively. Excellent areas under the receiver operating characteristic curves were found for most measures, except for the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale for Children and Adolescents and the Mini-Social Phobia Inventory, which had good discriminatory ability. There was little statistical difference in the ability of the brief social anxiety measures to identify cases accurately, although the SPAI-B cutoff score yielded the best balance between sensitivity and specificity and the highest Youden Index. Overall, results suggest that brief measures for social anxiety symptoms can be effective in detecting SAD in Spanish-speaking adolescents. Depending on the purpose of the study, SAS-A may be especially useful for reducing false negatives and the SPAI-B for false positives.
Schizophrenia is the most debilitating and costly of all adult psychiatric illnesses. Despite the... more Schizophrenia is the most debilitating and costly of all adult psychiatric illnesses. Despite the recent trend toward community-oriented treatment, about 25% of all psychiatric hospital beds are occupied by persons with schizophrenia. The costs of treating schizophrenia are ...
The development, reliability, and discriminative ability of a new instrument to assess social pho... more The development, reliability, and discriminative ability of a new instrument to assess social phobia are presented. The Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory (SPAI) is an empirically derived instrument incorporating responses from the cognitive, somatic, and behavioral dimensions of social fear. The SPAI has high test–retest reliability and good internal consistency. The instrument appears to be sensitive to the entire continuum
This study compared the ability of children with social phobia and children with no psychiatric d... more This study compared the ability of children with social phobia and children with no psychiatric disorder to accurately judge facial affect. Fifteen children and adolescents with social phobia and 14 control children were asked to identify emotions depicted in slides from the Pictures of Facial Affect. In addition, they rated their level of anxiety on a pictorial Likert scale prior to and upon completion of the facial recognition task. The results indicated that children with social phobia had significantly poorer facial affect recognition skills than normal controls and reported greater anxiety upon completion of the recognition task. Multivariate analysis revealed significant differences between groups in the number of errors based on the type of facial affect. Posthoc analysis indicated that deficits were most pronounced for facial representations of happiness, sadness, and disgust. The results are discussed in relation to an integrated model of social skills training that include...
Behavioral and biological theories addressing the etiology of social anxiety disorder are discuss... more Behavioral and biological theories addressing the etiology of social anxiety disorder are discussed. Although not often diagnosed until adolescence or adulthood, social anxiety disorder can have its onset during childhood. Early recognition and treatment of this condition may prevent both immediate and long-term detrimental outcomes and, possibly, the onset of comorbid conditions. However, special considerations are required for the diagnosis and treatment of childhood social anxiety disorder. Therapists face special challenges when treating youth with social anxiety disorder, including patient and parent considerations. Although not documented specifically for children with social anxiety disorders, data from families with anxious children suggest that familial factors may play a role in treatment outcome.
Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 2004
In this study we examined the psychopathology and behavioral treatment of White and African Ameri... more In this study we examined the psychopathology and behavioral treatment of White and African American preadolescent children with social phobia. The comprehensive assessment strategy, including semistructured diagnostic interviews, clinician ratings of impairment, behavioral observations, parental ratings, and self-report inventories, did not reveal differences in symptomatic presentation between African American and White children. Whereas all children improved from pre- to posttreatment, there were no significant differences based on race. The results are discussed in terms of the applicability of models 0of social phobia and treatment outcome across these 2 ethnic groups.
Page 1. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 1988, Vol. °7, No. 1,80-82 Copyright 1988 by the American ... more Page 1. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 1988, Vol. °7, No. 1,80-82 Copyright 1988 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 002I-843X/88/S00.75 Psychophysiological Assessment of Anxious Emotional States in Children ...
... 1984 who (a) had received a primary DSM-III clinical diagnosis of either panic disorder or ag... more ... 1984 who (a) had received a primary DSM-III clinical diagnosis of either panic disorder or agoraphobia with panic attacks and (b) had completed at that time both the Fear Survey Schedule (FSS; Wolpe & Lang ... Boyd, JH, Burke, JD, Gruenberg, E., Holzer, CE Ill, Rae, DS, George. ...
... Seminars m Psychiatry, 3, 36-45. Christopherson, L. (1976). Cardiac transplantation need for ... more ... Seminars m Psychiatry, 3, 36-45. Christopherson, L. (1976). Cardiac transplantation need for patient counseling. ... I. Early assessment. Journal of Thoracic ami Cardiovascular Surgery, 84, 585-594. Simmons, RG, Kamstra-Hennen, L., & Thompson, CR (1981). ...
The use of attention training protocols for the treatment of generalized social anxiety disorder ... more The use of attention training protocols for the treatment of generalized social anxiety disorder (SAD) is undergoing increased examination. Initial investigations were positive but more recent investigations have been less supportive of the treatment paradigm. One significant limitation of current investigations is over-reliance on self-report. In this investigation, we expanded on initial investigations by using a multimodal assessment of patient functioning (i.e., including behavioral assessment). Patients with a primary diagnosis of SAD (n = 31) were randomly assigned to eight sessions of attention training (n = 15) or placebo/control (n = 16). Participants were assessed at pre- and post-treatment via self- and clinician-report of social anxiety as well as anxious and behavioral response to two in vivo social interactions. Results revealed no differences between groups at post-treatment for all study outcome variables, suggesting a lack of effect for the attention training condit...
Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics, 2015
Social anxiety disorder (SAD) in adolescents is considerably underdetected and undertreated despi... more Social anxiety disorder (SAD) in adolescents is considerably underdetected and undertreated despite the availability of efficacious treatments. Our main study objective was to examine brief, valid, and reliable screening measures for adolescent social anxiety, and to then conduct diagnostic interviews to evaluate the measures' ability to identify adolescents with SAD. We examined 7 brief and valid social anxiety measures and compared their diagnostic accuracy with diagnoses established by a semistructured interview. The sample included 421 Spanish adolescents with and 613 without a clinical diagnosis of SAD. Data revealed that short social anxiety measures are accurate in detecting Spanish-speaking socially anxious adolescents. All questionnaires showed good or excellent discriminating ability, with the Social Anxiety Scale for Adolescents (SAS-A) and the Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory-Brief (SPAI-B) having the best sensitivity and specificity values, respectively. Excellent areas under the receiver operating characteristic curves were found for most measures, except for the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale for Children and Adolescents and the Mini-Social Phobia Inventory, which had good discriminatory ability. There was little statistical difference in the ability of the brief social anxiety measures to identify cases accurately, although the SPAI-B cutoff score yielded the best balance between sensitivity and specificity and the highest Youden Index. Overall, results suggest that brief measures for social anxiety symptoms can be effective in detecting SAD in Spanish-speaking adolescents. Depending on the purpose of the study, SAS-A may be especially useful for reducing false negatives and the SPAI-B for false positives.
Schizophrenia is the most debilitating and costly of all adult psychiatric illnesses. Despite the... more Schizophrenia is the most debilitating and costly of all adult psychiatric illnesses. Despite the recent trend toward community-oriented treatment, about 25% of all psychiatric hospital beds are occupied by persons with schizophrenia. The costs of treating schizophrenia are ...
The development, reliability, and discriminative ability of a new instrument to assess social pho... more The development, reliability, and discriminative ability of a new instrument to assess social phobia are presented. The Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory (SPAI) is an empirically derived instrument incorporating responses from the cognitive, somatic, and behavioral dimensions of social fear. The SPAI has high test–retest reliability and good internal consistency. The instrument appears to be sensitive to the entire continuum
This study compared the ability of children with social phobia and children with no psychiatric d... more This study compared the ability of children with social phobia and children with no psychiatric disorder to accurately judge facial affect. Fifteen children and adolescents with social phobia and 14 control children were asked to identify emotions depicted in slides from the Pictures of Facial Affect. In addition, they rated their level of anxiety on a pictorial Likert scale prior to and upon completion of the facial recognition task. The results indicated that children with social phobia had significantly poorer facial affect recognition skills than normal controls and reported greater anxiety upon completion of the recognition task. Multivariate analysis revealed significant differences between groups in the number of errors based on the type of facial affect. Posthoc analysis indicated that deficits were most pronounced for facial representations of happiness, sadness, and disgust. The results are discussed in relation to an integrated model of social skills training that include...
Uploads
Papers by Deborah Beidel