Originally published: . Volume 10, No. 5. Source pages: 1, 11.
Dr. Thompson (Tom) Davis, Professor, Director of the Psychological Services Center, and Director of the Laboratory for Anxiety, Phobia, & Internalizing Disorder Studies at the Department of Psychology, Louisiana State University, was an invited speaker at the prestigious Yale conference, and the first non-Yale presenter to speak in the history of the event, the Annual Spotlight on Anxiety Forum: The Many Faces of Anxiety, presented by Yale Child Study Center, Anxiety & Mood Disorders Program. The conference was in April.
The Yale Child Study Center Anxiety & Mood Disorders Program is a leading clinical and research center for the assessment and treatment of children with anxiety and comorbid disorders.
Dr. Davis spoke on "Fears & Phobias." Davis recently published an article, as an invited author, on one-session CBT treatment for the Annual Review of Clinical Psychology.
Dr. Davis is one of the few psychological scientists who understand the nuances of the one-session CBT treatment. He has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Anxiety Disorders, Behavior Therapy, the Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment, and Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review.
One of Dr. Davis’ books, Intensive One-Session Treatment of Specific Phobias, published by Springer, is considered to be the treatment manual for this approach.
One of the few experts in the world on one-session treatments for children with phobias, Dr. Davis was named to an international team to study the topic. In 2016 he was contacted by research scientists in the United Kingdom to be part of the $2 million research program and grant from the U.K. National Institute for Health Research.
Why is this topic so relevant these days and important to these professionals? "I think there is a push to get as much 'done' therapeutically in as little time as possible," Dr. Davis said. "A treatment like OST certainly does that–giving patients the option of even traveling in for just a day or a weekend of care. Better understanding this treatment may lead to more innovative ways to help with other problems––probably not in just 3 hours, but even if we were able to take 20 or 30% off the time involved in other therapies that would be tremendous."
The response to his work was very positive but he noticed that there is a dissemination problem for one-session treatment. "Where does one go to get it? How can one be trained in it? etc. As a result, it is still hard to find a practitioner who does it even though the treatment has been around for almost 40 years!"
Dr. Davis' Annual Review article can be obtained at https://www.annualreviews.org/ doi/abs/10.1146/annurev- clinpsy-050718-095608
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