Applying DBT Mindfulness Skills to the Treatment of Clients with Anxiety Disorders

Abstract

Clinicians and researchers have increasingly begun to acknowledge the potential benefits of incorporating acceptance- and mindfulness-based approaches into cognitive-behavioral treatments for the anxiety disorders (see Orsillo, Roemer, Block, Lejeune, & Herbert, 2004; Orsillo, Roemer, Block-Lerner, & Tull, 2004). As such, the past several years have seen the development of innovative mindfulness- and acceptance-based cognitivebehavioral treatments for several anxiety disorders, including generalized anxiety disorder (Roemer & Orsillo, 2002), panic disorder (PD; Karekla & Forsyth, 2004), posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD; Orsillo & Batten, 2005), and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD; Singh,Wahler,Winton, & Adkins, 2004). Evidence in support of these treatments is provided by both preliminary data on their efficacy (Karekla & Forsyth, 2004; Roemer & Orsillo, 2004) and basic research on the potential benefits of emotional acceptance (relative to suppression) within PD (Levitt, Brown, Orsillo, & Barlow, 2004) and among individuals with heightened anxiety sensitivity (Eifert & Heffner, 2003).