Flourishing and Virtue in Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Anxiety and Depressive Disorders

This semi-structured, diagnostic clinical interview focuses on Diagnostic and Statistical Manual-5 diagnoses of anxiety disorders and their accompanying mood states, somatoform disorders, and substance and alcohol use. The information derived from the interview using the ADIS allows clinicians to determine differential diagnoses and gain a clear understanding of the level and severity of each diagnosis. Principal and additional diagnoses are assigned a clinical severity rating (CSR) on a scale from 0 (no symptoms) to 8 (extremely severe symptoms), with a rating of 4 or above (definitely disturbing/disabling) passing the clinical threshold for DSM diagnostic criteria. Inquiries about suicidal ideation are part of this interview. This measure has demonstrated excellent to acceptable interrater reliability for the anxiety and mood disorders (Brown, Di Nardo, et al., 2001).

The PANAS-X is a brief, reliable and valid measure of positive and negative affect. It consists of 20 feeling or emotion words (e.g., interested, upset, nervous). Respondents rate each emotion word on a scale ranging from 1 = very slightly or not at all to 5 = extremely, indicating the extent to which they experience that emotion or feeling in general. The PANAS-X has shown excellent convergent and discriminant correlations with lengthier measures of underlying mood factors and is a widely used measure of state negative affect (Watson et al., 1988).

The SBI is a measure of one's tendency to savor or dampen positive emotions (Bryant, F. B. 2003). It includes distinctions among future, present, and past focused forms of savouring. The SBI includes 24 items with 4 positively-worded and 4 negatively-worded items for each of the three temporal forms of savoring (rated on a 7-point scale from 1 = strongly agree to 7 = strongly disagree) . Overall, the SBI is a valid and reliable measure of individuals' beliefs about their capacity to savour positive experiences (Bryant 2003).

The FI is a measurement approach to human flourishing, based around five central domains: happiness and life satisfaction, mental and physical health, meaning and purpose, character and virtue, and close social relationships. The FI consists of 10 questions on a 10 point Likert scale (with 0 = strongly disagree to 10 = strongly agree) (VanderWeele, 2017). The FI has demonstrated good internal consistency and evidence of validity and reliability (Węziak-Białowolska et al, 2019).