Prevalence of retained primitive reflexes in patients with anxiety disorders

Abstract

Anxiety is not only one of the mental health disorders most commonly referred to clinicians, but is also a research interest, producing subsequent modification in treatment approaches. However, there are suggestions in the literature that the effectiveness of some psychological treatments have not been systematically evaluated (Department of Health, 2001), or that treatment studies have employed methods unrepresentative of everyday clinical practice (World Health Organization.2000). Furthermore, from analysis of outcome studies, psychological therapies have been reported as effective for only half of those treated (Fisher & Durham, 1999). These findings suggest that there are individuals with anxiety who fail to respond to available therapies, and that alternative approaches for this group are not well studied.One biologically-based explanation for variable responses to treatment cites the possibility of anxiety as resulting from failed development of primitive and postural reflexes, necessary for processing sensory information and maintaining gravitational security. This theory is central to the work of the Institute for Neuro-Physiological Psychology (I.N.P.P.), recently applied to research which identified infantile reflexes, and failed transformation to adult responses, in a population of adults with differing sub-types of anxiety (Blythe, 1999).This study aimed to apply I.N.N.P. reflex tests to the detection of the characteristics of reflexes in a group of adult patients with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, compared to a group of non-anxious adults. A significant difference was found between patient and control group reflex test mean scores, patients achieving higher scores on all of the six iii tests employed in the study. From analysis of all individual test scores, two of these, detecting involvement of labyrinthine processes, resulted in the highest scores. The findings from analysis of resulting data are discussed in relation to implications for future study and further use of the measures with differing populations.