Invitation to participate in study

Fiona Patrick would like to invite service users to participate in a research project, which forms part of her training. Fiona am a researcher training to become a clinical psychologist.

What is this study about?

The study aims to explore whether specific aspects of our thinking skills are important to consider in relation to the outcomes for a specific type of treatment (in this case, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) for anxiety). In particular, we are interested in these factors in people aged over 60, as there is little research in this area.

The types of thinking skills that we are interested in are executive functioning (these are ‘higher level’ thinking skills and include our ability to plan and organise) and short-term memory (our ability to hold information in mind for short periods of time).

These thinking skills can sometimes change as we age. We hope to measure these skills in people aged over 60 before they start CBT to see if this is linked to how well (usually, how much less anxious) those people feel when CBT finishes. This could help us make sure CBT is useful for people aged over 60 in the future.