Simon Blackwell

Happy to see our registered replication paper out led by Nathan Pond as part of his PhD with Ryan Scott, @drpatclarke.bsky.social and Lies Notebaert. See more of Nathan's work here: www.linkedin.com/in/nathan-po...

Photo of the book "Group sequential and Adaptive methods for clinical trials: second edition" by Christopher Jennison and Bruce W. Turnbull

Looking forward to finding out exactly how much of this book I can actually understand...

What to target? Interventions to modulate key mechanisms underlying the trajectories of affective disorders in the transregional Collaborative Research Center 393 - Der Nervenarzt Background Affective disorders are associated with an enormous disease burden, necessitating research on the mechanisms of effective treatments. Objectives This article introduces the intervention pro...

Introduction to the interventions tested in our @trr393.bsky.social consortium to improve #depression and #bipolardisorder
Big thanks to @lisaleehr.bsky.social!
@unimarburg.bsky.social @tudresden.bsky.social @uni-muenster.de @dfg.de @dgps.bsky.social
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Curious about curiosity? Join us in Göttingen in our RTG Curiosity funded by @dfg.de

🎧New episode alert 🎧
How can Behavioural Activation help people move from feeling stuck to re-engaging with what matters?
Dr Christopher Martell joins us on Practice Matters to talk about BA for depression.
Listen here 👉 https://ow.ly/lwNz50XyySy

…or wherever you get your podcasts.

I am very excited to share our new preprint, spearheaded by the brilliant @lunahuestegge.bsky.social, w/ @peterkok.bsky.social and others: ‘An attempt to push mental imagery over the reality threshold using non-invasive brain stimulation’

doi.org/10.31234/osf...

Verlängerung für zwei Bochumer Sonderforschungsbereiche Plasmaforschung und Extinktionslernen: Beide Sonderforschungsbereiche starten in ihre jeweils dritte Förderphase.

Zwei Bochumer Sonderforschungsbereiche gehen in die jeweils dritte Förderphase: Es geht um Plasmaforschung und ums Extinktionslernen, also einmal Gelerntes wieder loszuwerden.

Does structured, psychometrically based feedback discussion cause improvements of the therapeutic alliance? A single-case experimental study Routine outcome monitoring and feedback (ROM) systems have been established to enhance therapeutic outcomes, prevent drop-outs and facilitate data-driven personalization in psychotherapy. However, ...

🔥 New paper, led by my PhD student @selindem.bsky.social: preregistered single-case experimental study showing the positive impact of using the GPNS feedback system on the therapeutic alliance.

Open access: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Joy beyond fear: Positive emotions after exposure in patients with anxiety disorders and their link to threat expectancy and treatment outcome Exposure-based CBT is effective in treating anxiety disorders, but individual responses vary substantially, underlining the need to identify and boost…

You did it! 💪

New study on the importance of positive emotions after successful exposures in adult patients with anxiety disorders.

Ergo: Let's celebrate our patients and their willingness to confront anxiety-inducing stimuli! 🎉
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

✨Wunderbare Neuigkeiten: Die Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft fördert unser neues Netzwerk SNEPP – das Scientific Network for Experimental Psychopathology and Psychotherapy!

www.uni-goettingen.de/de/3240.html...

Intraindividual Trajectories of Belief Updating in Relation to Depressive Symptoms: Reduced Integration of Positive Performance Feedback - Sebastian Meyerhöfer, Charlotte Ottenstein, Lukas Kirchner, L... Previous research suggests that depression is related to difficulties with revising established negative expectations. However, it is not yet clear how precisel...

New paper in CPS 🎉: We developed and validated a novel trial-by-trial belief update task, which allowed us to examine the association with depression quite precisely: dep symptoms were related to a slower update of established negative beliefs following pos info. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Imagery Rescripting: an update of the treatment protocol Imagery Rescripting (ImRs) is a transdiagnostic technique to treat aversive memories of real (traumatic) experiences, or of aversive fantasies, such a…

This looks to be a must-read for anyone interested in imagery rescripting: an account by Arnoud Arntz of their updated imagery rescripting protocol, including very extensive supplements with therapist resources:

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

A guided single session intervention to reduce intrusive memories of work-related trauma: a randomised controlled trial with healthcare workers in the COVID-19 pandemic - BMC Medicine Background Intrusive memories of psychologically traumatic events bring distress both sub-clinically and clinically. This parallel-group, two-arm randomised controlled trial evaluated the effect of a ...

The focus has generally been reducing intrusive memories (and hence improving mental health/functional outcomes) following a (potentially) traumatic event rather than PTSD prevention as such - there are now some larger RCTs, e.g.:

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

it's an interesting first illustration of an idea within a naturalistic context, and a next step would be to start evaluating it, e.g. in a formal case series.

I see that the "has potential" is in the context of "Pending further rigorous testing…", i.e. has potential if rigorous testing shows it to be effective - which is kind of tautologous, but I guess there is not much more that they can conclude at this stage:

Yes, the mention of "early intervention" is a bit confusing as it doesn't relate to the case illustration here, rather something they mention in the paper as a potential future use-case for exploring.

The IBER study: a feasibility randomised controlled trial of imagery based emotion regulation for the treatment of anxiety in bipolar disorder - International Journal of Bipolar Disorders Background Intrusive mental imagery is associated with anxiety and mood instability within bipolar disorder and therefore represents a novel treatment target. Imagery Based Emotion Regulation (IBER) i...

(Note that variations of this kind of technique have been integrated into some imagery-focussed therapies, e.g.:

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

and have been tested in isolation in some RCTs, e.g.

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

but this has all previously been in adult samples).

A Brief Technique to Reduce Flashbacks of Sexual Trauma in an Adolescent: Proof-of-Concept Case Study Using Imagery Interference Background: Trauma exposure, including sexual harm, is prevalent in adolescents. A key resulting symptom relates to re-experiencing mental images of trauma, such as intrusive memories and flashbacks. ...

Very interesting to read this case study reporting use of visuo-spatial interference (Tetris) to reduce intrusive memories in the context of an adolescent with trauma:

formative.jmir.org/2025/1/e79708

(with apologies for the "head-clutching" image that appears as the thumbnail for this page).

Must We Always Go Idiographic? - Cognitive Therapy and Research Purpose While psychological change processes are increasingly assumed to be “non-ergodic”, prompting a shift toward idiographic approaches, the assumption of ergodicity is often accepted a priori rath...

🚀 New paper (open access) out in Cognitive Therapy & Research: we (@herzog.bsky.social, @evalottabrakemeier.bsky.social, @hudsongolino.bsky.social and me) ask whether group‑level symptom‑change networks in CBT actually capture what happens inside each patient. #Psychology #CBT

Driving cognitive change: a guide to behavioural experiments in cognitive therapy for anxiety disorders and PTSD Behavioural experiments are experiential exercises used in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy to drive cognitive change by testing patients’ idiosyncratic, emotionally linked beliefs. In this paper, we ...

Driving cognitive change: a guide to behavioural experiments in cognitive therapy for anxiety disorders and PTSD
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Great to have the iMAPS-2 RCT published as part of this special issue

doi.org/10.1093/schb...

What if therapy focused not on thoughts or voices, but images in our mind's eye?

The iMAPS-2 trial tested an imagery-focused therapy for psychosis; helping people make sense of vivid, distressing mental images.

iMAPS is:
safe ✅
acceptable ✅
ready for a full-scale RCT 👇

🧵 THREAD

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

Interesting study finding that autistic adults with social anxiety don't seem to show the bias for observer-perspective mental imagery in social situations that is typically found in studies with non-autistic adults with social anxiety: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Autobiographical Processing and Psychopathology Conference 2026 What's on at the University of Plymouth: Autobiographical Processing and Psychopathology Conference 2026. Special interest meeting. University of...

📢 Submissions are now open for the 2026 Autobiographical Processing & Psychopathology Conference, at the University of Plymouth 🌊 on 23rd - 24th June 2026 🎉!

📌Visit the #APP2026 website for more details: www.plymouth.ac.uk/whats-on/aut...

📬Join our mailing list: stats.sender.net/forms/bqxQO0...

Some Christmas pudding mix, next to a bottle of stout.

Making a Christmas pudding (late, I know) using my grandmother's recipe, which calls for 1/8 th pint of stout. This year I used a stout brewed using cake; if I can use some of this pudding to make a next stout, potential is there for setting up an infinite stout-pudding loop...

📢 Call for Papers – BABCP 2026 Annual Conference

Submissions are now open! Share your work, connect with peers, and shape the future of the psychological professions.
Posters, panels, symposia & more → https://babcp.com/submissions/

#CallForPapers #BABCP2026

Some People Can’t See Mental Images. The Consequences Are Profound Research has linked the ability to visualize to a bewildering variety of human traits—how we experience trauma, hold grudges, and, above all, remember our lives.

Excited to see this article is out! A thoroughly researched article on imagery extremes. If you read carefully, a couple of my most recent thoughts about hyperphantasia are also featured :-)

This includes... 1/4

www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Keep checking the website for updates, and start getting your submissions ready – we look forward to receiving them! /3 #BABCP2026

Already confirmed as keynotes are: @clbockting.bsky.social
, Michelle Brooks-Ucheaga, Helen Kennerley, @willemkuyken.bsky.social, @marialoades.bsky.social , @lluaces.bsky.social , @homahen.bsky.social , @emmanuelle-peters.bsky.social , with more (plus workshops) to come soon… /2 #BABCP2026

Submissions for #BABCP2026 in Warwick are now open! Main submission deadline is 30th January (27th February for posters, open papers, and 3-minute talks). Check out the website for more details, including speakers confirmed so far… /1

babcp.com/events/2026-...

@babcp.com @drjodaniels.bsky.social