Search

The Military Family Wellness Center at Columbia University Irving Medical Center provides cost-free, confidential mental health services to military service members, veterans, and their families in a nongovernmental setting, with an emphasis on addressing gaps in available care. Partnerships with academic institutions and collaboration with veteran organizations, regional stakeholders, and local Veterans Administration centers facilitate cross-site referrals, enhance knowledge and expertise, and advance shared goals. This article describes the development of these relationships, focusing on key priorities, barriers overcome, and lessons learned. Future directions are discussed.

Patients with social anxiety disorder exhibit increased attentional dwelling on social threats, providing a viable target for therapeutics. This randomized controlled trial examined the efficacy of a novel gaze-contingent music reward therapy for social anxiety disorder designed to reduce attention dwelling on threats.Forty patients with social anxiety disorder were randomly assigned to eight sessions of either gaze-contingent music reward therapy, designed to divert patients' gaze toward neutral stimuli rather than threat stimuli, or to a control condition. Clinician and self-report measures of social anxiety were acquired pretreatment, posttreatment, and at 3-month follow-up. Dwell time on socially threatening faces was assessed during the training sessions and at pre- and posttreatment.Gaze-contingent music reward therapy yielded greater reductions of symptoms of social anxiety disorder than the control condition on both clinician-rated and self-reported measures. Therapeutic effects were maintained at follow-up. Gaze-contingent music reward therapy, but not the control condition, also reduced dwell time on threat, which partially mediated clinical effects. Finally, gaze-contingent music reward therapy, but not the control condition, also altered dwell time on socially threatening faces not used in training, reflecting near-transfer training generalization.This is the first randomized controlled trial to examine a gaze-contingent intervention in social anxiety disorder. The results demonstrate target engagement and clinical effects. This study sets the stage for larger randomized controlled trials and testing in other emotional disorders.