The study, conducted by McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, shows the potential effectiveness of CBM-I when combined with cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) in an acute psychiatric setting.
Furthermore, the study by the hospital's researchers said CBM-I points the way for adapting this therapeutic approach for use outside the hospital.
CBM-I is a relatively new approach to cognitive behavioural therapy and refers to receiving treatment for anxiety and depression online and in the privacy and comfort of your own home.
Courtney Beard, lead researcher of the study and director of McLean's Cognition and Affect Research and Education (CARE) Laboratory, described CBM-I as a "class of interventions designed to shift people's interpretations of ambiguous situations in either a more positive or more negative way".
Beard also explained that "CBM-I tries to address interpretation bias, a mental habit that is implicated in many mental disorders".
In order to achieve this, individuals undergoing CBM-I treatment can be presented with a series of word association questions that address everyday situations.
For example, the CBM-I task may show a patient a situation with a person yawning during their conversation. The patient is asked whether that person is 'tired' or 'bored'; the individuals that answer 'tired' are told the response is correct, while those that answer 'bored' are told this is incorrect.
According to the researchers, through repetition, this type of CBM-I therapy helps the person reframe or reassess these daily ambiguous situations.
"People face countless interactions like this every day in their lives," Beard said. "If you tend to jump to a threatening or negative conclusion, it can have a huge impact on how you're feeling and on what you do and how you react. You can get stuck in a cycle that can maintain anxiety or depression."
For the study, Beard and her colleagues developed and implemented CBM-I to augment CBT-based treatment in a partial hospital setting, presenting patients with word-sentence associations that encouraged patients to endorse positive interpretations and reject negative interpretations.
Results from the study showed that CBM-I was practical and acceptable to acute psychiatric patients, with many participants stating that CBM-I bolstered their primary CBT-based care.
The study also found that that the word association exercises were successful in helping reframe potentially negative situations.
Based on these results, Beard and her team are moving forward with a National Institute of Mental Health-backed study to develop a smartphone version of CBM-I.
"With the smartphone app, we can offer CBM-I to many more people at one time," Beard said. "With the app, they can practice new skills, create healthy mental habits, and stop automatically jumping to negative conclusions. And they can do it on demand."
Beard added that the app could be particularly helpful for individuals who have just been discharged from a treatment programme.
She said: "They can use it during the month transition period after they leave the hospital, which is a risky and challenging time for them.
"It quickly shows people what their brain is doing," she explained further. "The patient sees hundreds of situations in a short amount of time.
"So, they see how often they jumped to a negative conclusion, and that can be very powerful. It's kind of like cognitive therapy in your pocket – but a little different and a lot faster," she concluded.
The study, 'Translating CBM-I Into Real-World Settings: Augmenting a CBT-Based Psychiatric Hospital Program,' was published in the journal Behavior Therapy.