Andri Bjornsson

• PhD
• Professor at University of Iceland

Importance Comprehensive data on the prevalence of various life stressors and their role in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among women are lacking. Objective To determine the prevalence of a broad range of life stressors and their association with PTSD in a large nationally representative cohort of women. Design, Setting, and Participants T...

Background There is emerging evidence that a brief cognitive task intervention may reduce the frequency of intrusive memories, even long-standing memories of older trauma. However, evaluations to date have involved in-person researcher contact. We investigated the feasibility and acceptability of remote delivery to women (n = 12) in Iceland who had...

Introduction: Multiple myeloma (MM) develops over years from the asymptomatic precursors, monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS) and smoldering multiple myeloma (SMM). Recent evidence shows that initiating treatment at an asymptomatic stage improves outcomes in MM. However, a vast majority of MM patients are diagnosed at the poin...

Background Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are well-known risk factors for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Aims The aim was to study the associations between specific ACEs and psychological functioning in women with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. Method Among 29 367 women (mean age 44 years) from the Icelandic Stress-And-Gene-Analysi...

Cognitive theories of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) feature appraisal of trauma as a critical factor in the development and maintenance of the disorder. Here we explored appraisals of social trauma (severe rejection or humiliation). Participants were outpatients with social anxiety disorder (SAD) and clinically significant PTSD symptoms (PT...

Cancer screening is recommended for select cancers worldwide. Cancer screening has become increasingly effective and accessible and often increases overall survival. However, the mental health effects of cancer screening, such as its impact on depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder, are largely unknown. Conflicting available litera...

Background: Novel interventions should be developed for people who have undergone psychological trauma. In a previous case study, we found that the number of intrusive memories of trauma could be reduced with a novel intervention. The intervention included a brief memory reminder, a visuospatial task and mental rotation, and targeted trauma memory...

BACKGROUND Novel interventions should be developed for people who have undergone psychological trauma. In a previous case study, we found that the number of intrusive memories of trauma could be reduced with a novel intervention. The intervention included a brief memory reminder, a visuospatial task and mental rotation, and targeted trauma memory h...

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic and efforts to contain it have substantially affected the daily lives of most of the world's population. Objective: We describe the impact of the first COVID-19 wave and associated social restrictions on the mental health of a large adult population. Methods: We performed a cohort study nested in a prospective...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.2196/29873.].

(Appeared originally in Journal of Affective Disorders 2019; 259:266-270).

Monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS) precedes multiple myeloma (MM). Population-based screening for MGUS could identify candidates for early treatment in MM. Here we describe the Iceland Screens, Treats, or Prevents Multiple Myeloma study (iStopMM), the first population-based screening study for MGUS including a randomized tria...

BACKGROUND Additional interventions are needed for survivors of psychological trauma. Case studies can help treatment innovation with an intervention designed to disrupt memory reconsolidation, taking a single symptom approach by focusing on intrusive memories of a traumatic event. OBJECTIVE We aimed to examine a novel brief cognitive intervention...

Background Additional interventions are needed for survivors of psychological trauma because of several barriers to and limitations of existing treatment options (eg, need to talk about the trauma in detail). Case studies are an important step in exploring the development of novel interventions, allowing detailed examination of individual responses...

In a previous study, body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) was shown to have comorbidity-independent associations with suicidality among patients in a partial hospital program. Here, we replicated and extended this study in an independent cohort (N = 1612) from the same program using a different measure of suicidality. Semi-structured interviews were used...

The key characteristic of a traumatic event as defined by the Diagnostic and Mental Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) seems to be a threat to life. However, evidence suggests that other types of threats may play a role in the development of PTSD and other disorders such as social anxiety disorder (SAD). One such threat is social trauma, which involv...

Attention biases to stimuli with emotional content may play a role in the development and maintenance of anxiety disorders. The most commonly used tasks in measuring and treating such biases, the dot-probe and spatial cueing tasks, have yielded mixed results, however. We assessed the sensitivity of four visual attention tasks (dot-probe, spatial cu...

Foraging tasks are increasingly used to investigate human visual attention as they may provide a more dynamic and multifaceted picture of attentional orienting than more traditionally used visual search tasks. A common way of assessing foraging performance involves measuring when foragers decide to move to a new "patch" with a higher yield. We asse...

Background: This study sought to examine whether mood, anxiety, and obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorders have unique (comorbidity-independent) associations with suicidal thoughts and behaviors in an acute psychiatric population. Methods: Patients (N = 498) were evaluated during admission to a partial hospital. Semi-structured interviews were...

Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) is a relatively common disorder characterized by a preoccupation with nonexistent or slight defects in appearance. BDD usually begins during childhood or adolescence. The preoccupation with the perceived appearance defect typically occurs for many hours a day and is often followed by repetitive behaviours (for example...

Research has suggested that African American and Latinx adults may develop posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) at higher rates than White adults, and that the clinical course of PTSD in these minority groups is poor. Factors that may contribute to higher prevalence and poorer outcome in these groups are sociocultural factors and racial stressors,...

Observers typically attend preferentially to stimuli with emotional content over emotionally neutral ones. For some this attentional pull is abnormally strong, and such attention biases may play a role in the development and maintenance of anxiety disorders. The assessment of potential biases is constrained by measurement methods. The tasks most co...

The present study examined sudden gains (SGs; large symptom improvements between adjacent treatment sessions) and its association with treatment outcome in a randomized-controlled trial comparing cognitive-behavioral group therapy (CBGT) versus group psychotherapy (GPT; designed to incorporate only non-specific factors) for social anxiety disorder...

Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) is a common disorder that is usually associated with impaired functioning and high levels of suicidality. The current study is the first to assess prevalence of BDD among patients in a partial hospital program and compare patients with and without BDD on demographic and clinical variables. Participants were 207 patien...

This study was designed to explore differences in group climate development between 2 brief group therapies, cognitive- behavioral group therapy (CBGT) and group psychotherapy (GPT), using multilevel growth curve analysis. Participants were 45 university students with a primary diagnosis of social anxiety disorder (SAD), randomly assigned to either...

The present study was a prospective, naturalistic, longitudinal investigation of the two year course of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in a sample of African Americans with anxiety disorders. The study objectives were to examine the two year course of PTSD and to evaluate differences between African Americans with PTSD and anxiety disorders a...

The aim of the study was to evaluate trends in body image and dieting among 16-19-year-old students in Iceland from 2000 to 2010. Data from four cross-sectional surveys conducted among Icelandic students in 26 junior colleges using four time points were compared to examine changes in body image and dieting. In total, 33,801 students with the mean a...

Prior investigations consistently indicate that personality pathology is a risk factor for recurrence of major depressive disorder (MDD). Lack of emipircal support, however, for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) Fourth Edition organization of Axis II disorders supports the investigation of empirically derived factors o...

Objective: It is imperative to study the clinical course of anxiety disorders among Latinos, given the implications for culturally sensitive treatment in this population. The current study is the first prospective, observational, longitudinal study of anxiety disorders among Latinos. Method: Data are reported on 139 adult Latinos (M age = 34.65...

Reports an error in "Two-year course of generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, and panic disorder in a longitudinal sample of African American adults" by Nicholas J. Sibrava, Courtney Beard, Andri S. Bjornsson, Ethan Moitra, Risa B. Weisberg and Martin B. Keller ( Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology , 2013[Dec], Vol 81[6],...

Attention bias modification (ABM) aimed at correcting dysfunctional biases in anxiety patients has met with only mild success. Inspired by recent studies showing large effects of financial reward upon attention shifts, we contrasted effects of traditional dot-probe ABM and reward upon attention biases in a between-subject 2 × 2 design. Twenty-seven...

Objective: This study examined the effects of the OutSMARTers program on social skills, self-regulation, and executive functions compared with a Waitlist group and a parent training program. Method: Participants were 41 children with ADHD, aged 8 to 10 years. All groups were assessed with behavioral checklists and neuropsychological measures at bas...

Objective: Anxiety disorders are the most common group of psychiatric disorders in adults. In addition to high prevalence, anxiety disorders are associated with significant functional impairment, and published research has consistently found them to have a chronic course. To date, very little research has explored the clinical characteristics and p...

Background: Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) is a common and often severe disorder. Clinical observations suggest that panic attacks triggered by BDD symptoms may be common. However, to our knowledge, no study has examined such panic attacks in BDD. We investigated the prevalence, clinical features, and correlates of BDD- triggered panic attacks in...

Objective: Age at onset is an important clinical feature of all disorders. However, no prior studies have focused on this important construct in body dysmorphic disorder (BDD). In addition, across a number of psychiatric disorders, early age at disorder onset is associated with greater illness severity and greater comorbidity with other disorders....

I evaluate the claim by Heatherington et al. (2012) that most clinical psychology graduate students are primarily educated in cognitive‐behavioral theory and therapy. I point out some limitations with their data, in part by describing my own experience in a “CBT” training program. I further contend that even if better data are needed, there may be...

In this randomized controlled trial, cognitive-behavioral group therapy (CBGT) for social anxiety disorder (SAD) was compared to group psychotherapy (GPT), a credible, structurally equivalent control condition that included only nonspecific factors of group treatment (such as group dynamics). Participants were 45 college students at the University...

Panic disorder with/without agoraphobia (PD/PDA) is a prevalent anxiety disorder, associated with impairment in quality of life and functionality, as well as increased healthcare utilization. Extant research shows a relationship between stressful life events (SLEs) and the onset of panic attacks in adults who ultimately develop PD/PDA. However, lim...

[Clin Psychol Sci Prac 18: 113–118, 2011] There are two major shortcomings in current psychotherapy research: the standards that are used to evaluate psychotherapy (especially the way control conditions are set up in outcome research) are often not acceptable, and nonspecific factors have been largely neglected (especially in cognitive and behavior...

The Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS) is a widely used measure of social anxiety. However, no study has examined the psychometric properties of the LSAS in an African American sample. The current study examined the LSAS characteristics in 97 African Americans diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. Overall, the original LSAS subscales showed excell...

This report prospectively examines the course of body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) for up to 8 years in a sample of 514 participants in the Harvard/Brown Anxiety Research Project, a naturalistic, longitudinal study of anxiety disorders. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.) BDD was assessed with a reliable semi-structured mea...

The article reports the results of three studies that compare the effects of experiential avoidance and rumination on depression among college students. Study 1 (N = 748) evaluated the cross-sectional association among rumination, experiential avoidance, and depression. Study 2 (N = 887) was a replication of Study 1. In Study 3, a subsample of 72 f...

Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) is a relatively common disorder that consists of a distressing or impairing preoccupation with imagined or slight defects in appearance. BDD is commonly considered to be an obsessivecompulsive spectrum disorder, based on similarities it has with obsessive-compulsive disorder. It is important to recognize and appropria...

At the core of avoidant personality disorder (APD) as defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is an extreme sensitivity to negative evaluation that, coupled with a view of self as incompetent and inferior to others, leads to pervasive avoidance in a number of social situations (American Psychiatric Association, 20...

DeRubeis et al. (this issue) offer a data-based critique of two arguments frequently presented in support of the “nonspecifics” hypothesis. This commentary supports their report of superior effects for specific treatments for specific disorders and provides some additional data to support their position. We maintain, however, that current research...

To access publisher full text version of this article. Please click on the hyperlink in Additional Link DeRubeis et al. (this issue) offer a data-based critique of two arguments frequently presented in support of the "nonspecifics" hypothesis. This commentary supports their report of superior effects for specific treatments for specific disorders a...