My Research

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This page provides summaries and links to some of the research I've been involved in over recent years, including:
  • Current Research Projects. >>
  • List of Publications. >>
  • Conference Talks and related PowerPoint Presentations. >>
  • Some Research Posters - thanks mainly to my research colleagues. >>
  • You can find out more about Clinical & Mental Health research by following me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/GrahamCLDavey

Research Showcase

Mechanisms of Catastrophic Worrying
Graham Davey, Frances Meeten, Suzanne Dash

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Chronic worrying is a feature of most anxiety-based mental health problems, and is characterised by a number of distinctive features such as perseveration at the worry activity and the catastrophisation of potential worry-related outcomes. One of the intriguing theoretical issues is why individuals with anxiety-based problems persevere with a worry bout for significantly longer than nonworriers despite this increasing their levels of distress and increasing their beliefs that bad things will happen. A number of dispositional factors have already been identified as characteristics of chronic worriers, and these include endemic negative mood, poor problem-solving confidence, and an intolerance of uncertainty (a predispostion to react negatively to an uncertain event or situation). This research explores how these dispositional factors may influence proximal cognitive mechanisms to generate perseveration or catastrophisation of worrying. The research programme is investigating how manipulation of dispositional factors such as intolerance of uncertainty, poor problem-solving confidence, and negative mood affects (1) an individual's goal-setting strategies for worrying; that is, how they affect the kinds of 'stop rules' that an individual adopts for terminating a worry bout, and (2) the type of information processing strategy that individuals adopt when in a worry bout; that is, whether they adopt a deliberate systematic approach to processing worry-relevant information, or whether they adopt a less effortful approach based on judgmental or heuristic rules. These studies will help to bridge the conceptual gap between explanations of worry perseveration couched at the level of dispositional or personality variables and explanations describing the proximal cognitive mechanisms that directly generate worry perseveration. Such an endeavour will be a critical feature of an integrated approach to psychopathology and a significant contributor to the development of therapeutic interventions for worry-based mental health problems.

Sample Publications:
Davey G C L & Meeten F (2016) The perseverative worry bout: A review of cognitive, affective and motivational factors that contribute to worry perseveration. Biological Psychology, 121, 233-243.

​Dash S R, Meeten F & Davey G C L (2013) Systematic information processing style and perseverative worrying. Clinical Psychology Review, 33, 1041-1056.

Meeten F & Davey G C L (2011) Mood-as-input hypothesis and perseverative psychopathologies. Clinical Psychology Review, 31, 1259-1275.

Developing a Low Intensity Intervention for Distressing Worry based on Mood-as-Input Theory
Graham Davey, Fergal Jones, Suzanne Dash & Frances Meeten

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The aim of this project is to work with service-users to develop a cost-effective, low intensity, psychological intervention for distressing worry and anxiety by drawing on mood-as-input theory. A mood-as-input based cognitive-behavioural intervention has the potential to be more effective than existing low intensity cognitive-behavioural approaches to distressing worry and anxiety by emphasising and addressing the important interaction between mood and rules about worrying in a way that other cognitive-behavioural interventions currently do not.  Many service-users with mental health problems experience distressing worry and anxiety, and these symptoms feature in many conditions, including Generalised Anxiety Disorder.   According to this account, we all have ‘stop-rules’ that we use to decide when to stop worrying. Sometimes we may be aware of these rules, though often we are not fully conscious of them.  The theory suggests that there are two types of stop rule, and that these interact differently with mood in order to determine whether someone continues to worry. ‘As-many-as-can’ stop rules are characterised by thoroughness and perfectionism, an example being  ‘I must continue to worry until I feel I have satisfactorily resolved this problem.’ Evidence suggests that people in a positive mood will tend to feel they have reached a resolution and so stop worrying, whereas people in a negative mood will tend to feel they haven’t and so continue to worry. The fact that many people worry when they are in a negative mood implies they will always feel they have never quite resolved their worry in a satisfactory way. This project aims to develop a low intensity intervention that will enable participants to understand and manage how their moods interact with their worry to generate perseveration.

Sample Publication:
Meeten F & Davey G C L (2011) Mood-as-input hypothesis and perseverative psychopathologies. Clinical Psychology Review, 31, 1259-1275.

Dash S R, Meeten F, Jones F & Davey G C L (2014) Evaluation of a 4-session psychoeducation procedure for high worriers based on mood-as-input hypothesis. Journal of Behavior Therapy & Experimental Psychiatry, 46, 126-132.