Thought suppression: specificity in agoraphobia versus broad impairment insocial phobia?

The paradoxical effects of intended thought suppression have been linked to psychological disorders, specifically anxiety disorders. So far, the evide nce for thought suppression playing a major role in the disorder is mixed. One important issue is whether thought suppression is impaired only for tho ughts related to the disorder, or if the ability for mental control is gene rally impaired in anxiety patients. This study compared groups of agoraphobics and social phobics with a health y control group. All subjects were asked to suppress two topics related to the respective central fear of the two disorders and one nonspecific topic. We found a rather specific deficit in thought suppression for the agorapho bics; that is, when compared with the control group, we found the biggest d ifferences for the agoraphobic fear. The social phobics seem to be characte rized by a general impairment of mental control, affecting specific and non specific stimuli. In addition, among several psychopathological variables, social anxiety proved to be the strongest predictor for problems with thoug ht suppression. Taken together, there are several indicators that generally impaired thought suppression may be an important feature of social phobia. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.