Research 2006
Behavioural Treatments for
Stress, Anxiety, and Depression
Doug Williams
Professor, Psychology
What makes one child anorexic and another healthy? How do you lead someone out of depression? How can a person neutralize their phobia?
Twenty per cent of us will suffer from an anxiety or depression disorder at some point in our lives. Between 30 and 40 people of every hundred who visit their doctors have anxiety or depression disorders. These disorders are consuming us.
Professor Doug Williams was drawn to behavioural research as an undergraduate student. “I was amazed when I realized that you could predict the behaviour of animals so well simply by manipulating their environment. Behaviour was not willy-nilly—it was actually predictable. We’re animals, too. There’s no big leap to what I’m doing now.”
Williams studies associative learning—learning that occurs unconsciously, without effort. Associative learning is what taught Pavlov’s dogs to salivate because they expected to be fed at the sound of a bell. It’s what teaches people to expect more friendly service from female waiters versus male waiters or better performance from a well-groomed worker. Destructive associative learning can also cause a young girl who has learned feelings of self-disgust to become anorexic.
“Without a clear understanding of how associative learning might contribute to regulating a person’s emotional state, it’s hard to treat it,” says Williams. “You have to know what the cause is before you can figure out how to undo it.”
Williams and his students work with both rats and people to refine models of associative learning. They test their experimental results against current mathematical models. By improving the models, Williams’s research will help clarify how associative learning contributes to maladaptive ways of thinking or maladaptive behaviours. That information can then be used to improve behavioural therapy treatments for conditions such as anorexia and depression.
“I don’t think people fully realize the extent to which psychological problems can be dealt with by using non-drug means of treatment,” says Williams. “You can treat the person with drugs or you can treat them with cognitive or behavioural therapies. People are less likely to relapse when they’ve been given cognitive or behavioural therapy.”
To learn more about his research on stress, anxiety, and depression, contact University of Winnipeg faculty member Doug Williams at d.williams@uwinnipeg.ca