The coordinator of the Applied Research Unit of the Center for Applied Psychology of the Faculty of Psychology, CEPA and student of the Doctorate in Psychology at the University of Talca, the psychologist Natalia Cancino, participated in the XIII International Congress of the Spanish Society for the Study of Anxiety and Stress (SEAS), which was held in Valencia, Spain, on March 9, 10 and 11, 2023, with the poster titled “What do studies in patients and controls reveal about habituation in mental disorders?” of anxiety and stress?”

This study is a review of the literature on alterations in simple responses, for example, blinking or muscle contractions, that occur in the face of the repeated presentation of a stimulus, that is, a tone or noise, and that are not due to motor fatigue or sensory damage, which can be generated in people with anxiety and stress disorders.

“In this review, we wanted to study if we could characterize the habituation phenomenon in people with these disorders, but we found that, as far as we know, it is not possible to do so yet because there are methodological aspects that need to be studied in more depth. This opens an important line of research, because conducting studies on habituation in people with these diagnostic conditions would allow us, in the future, to be able to build a procedure to position it as a biomarker of anxiety and stress.” Cancino said.

The work sent summarizes the research idea that the psychologist is carrying out with the professor and doctoral tutor Edgar Vogel, along with other academics, which allowed her to collect and give new perspectives to the research topics.

He also added that “I was also interested in learning about what is being studied in anxiety and stress in Spain and the rest of Europe and to know the treatments that are being applied and that are scientifically validated in order to, eventually, work on them in the interventions that are carried out at CEPA”.

The scientific evidence that continues to be generated around positive psychology research to work with anxiety and stress disorders is, to say the least, interesting. This current, rather than focusing on the pathology itself, seeks to find and strengthen a state of psychological well-being in people.

In this sense, Cancino points out that “it is important that scientific evidence is being generated that supports these interventions, because it speaks of their efficacy and, therefore, provides an additional working model for the clinical approach.”