Background:Mental imagery plays an important role in models of anxiety disorders in adults. This understanding rests on qualitative and quantitative studies. Qualitative studies of imagery in anxious adolescents have not been reported in the literature.Aims:To address this gap, we aimed to explore adolescents’ experiences of spontaneous imagery in the context of anxiety disorders.Method:We conducted one-to-one semi-structured interviews, with 13 adolescents aged 13–17 years with a DSM-5 anxiety disorder, regarding their experiences of spontaneous imagery. We analysed participants’ responses using thematic analysis.Results:We identified five superordinate themes relating to adolescents’ influences on images, distractions from images, controllability of images, emotional responses to imagery and contextual influences on imagery.Conclusions:Our findings suggest that spontaneous images are an important phenomenon in anxiety disorders in adolescents, associated with negative emotions during and after their occurrence. Contextual factors and adolescents’ own cognitive styles appear to influence adolescents’ experiences of images in anxiety disorders.

中文翻译：

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青少年焦虑症中的侵入性意象

背景：心理意象在成人焦虑症模型中起着重要作用。这种理解依赖于定性和定量研究。文献中没有关于焦虑青少年意象的定性研究的报道。目的：为了解决这一差距，我们旨在探索青少年在焦虑症背景下对自发意象的体验。方法：我们进行了一对一的半结构化访谈，对 13 名 13-17 岁的青少年进行了帝斯曼-5焦虑症，关于他们自发想象的经历。我们使用主题分析来分析参与者的反应。结果：我们确定了与青少年对图像的影响、图像的干扰、图像的可控性、对图像的情绪反应以及对图像的情境影响有关的五个高级主题。结论：我们的研究结果表明，自发图像是青少年焦虑症的一个重要现象，与他们发生期间和之后的负面情绪有关。背景因素和青少年自身的认知风格似乎会影响青少年对焦虑症图像的体验。