Tijdschrift voor Psychiatrie 37 (1995) 1
The fear of forgetting: treatment of functional memory complaints
In this article we report preliminary findings with a new psychological treatment for anxiety-related functional memory complaints. Central to this treatment is the assumption that the origin of the memory complaints is due to stressful individual circumstances or depressive episodes, whereas the complaints are primarily maintained by fear for dementia, a strong attentional bias for memory failures and negative thoughts and expectations about one s own memory functioning.