Disorders - Social phobia
Ebrahiminejad, S., Poursharifi, H., Roodsari, A. B., Zeinodini, Z., Noorbakhsh, S.
Background: Social anxiety is one of the most common psychological disorders that exists among children and adolescents, and it
has profound effects on their psychological states and academic achievements. Objectives: Theaimof this study was to determine the effectiveness of
mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT)ondiminishing social anxiety disorder symptoms and improving the self-esteem of female adolescents
suffering from social anxiety. Patients and Methods: Semi-experimental research was conducted on 30 female students diagnosed with social anxiety.
From the population of female students who were studying in Tehran's high schools in the academic year of 2013 -2014, 30 students fulfilling the
DSM-5 criteria were selected using the convenience sampling method and were randomly assigned to control and experimental groups. The experimental
group received eight sessions of MBCT treatment. The control group received no treatment. All participants completed the social phobia inventory
(SPIN) and Rosenberg self-esteem scale (RSES) twice as pre-and post-treatment tests. Results: The results from the experimental group indicated a
statistically reliable difference between the mean scores from SPIN (t (11) = 5.246, P = 0.000) and RSES (t (11) = -2.326, P = 0.040) pre-treatment
and post-treatment. On the other hand, the results of the control group failed to reveal a statistically reliable difference between the mean scores
from SPIN (t (12) = 1.089, P = 0.297) and RSES pre-treatment and post-treatment (t (12) = 1.089, P = 0.000). Conclusions: The results indicate that
MBCT is effective on both the improvement of self-esteem and the decrease of social anxiety. The results are in accordance with prior studies
performed on adolescents. Copyright © 2016, Iranian Red Crescent Medical Journal.
Iranian Red Crescent Medical
Journal, 18(11) : e25116
- Year: 2016
- Problem: Social phobia (social anxiety disorder)
- Type: Randomised controlled trials
-
Stage: Disorder established (diagnosed disorder)
-
Treatment and intervention: Psychological Interventions
(any), Cognitive & behavioural therapies (CBT), Mindfulness based
therapy
Fitzgerald, A., Rawdon, C., Dooley, B.
The current
study aimed to examine the efficacy of attention bias modification (ABM) training to reduce social anxiety in a community-based sample of adolescents
15-18 years. The study used a single-blind, parallel group, randomized controlled trial design (Clinical Trials ID: NCT02270671). Participants were
screened in second-level schools using a social anxiety questionnaire. 130 participants scoring >= 24 on the Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory for
Children (SPAI-C) were randomized to the ABM training (n = 66)/placebo (n = 64) group, 120 of which completed pre-, post-, and 12-week follow-up data
collection including threat bias, anxiety, and depression measures. The ABM intervention included 4 weekly training sessions using a dot-probe task
designed to reduce attention bias to threatening stimuli. ABM training did not alter the primary outcomes of attention bias to threat or social
anxiety symptoms raising questions about the efficacy of ABM as an intervention for adolescents. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights
reserved)
Behaviour Research and Therapy, 84 : 1-8
- Year: 2016
- Problem: Social phobia (social anxiety disorder)
- Type: Randomised controlled trials
-
Stage: At risk (indicated or selected prevention)
-
Treatment and intervention: Psychological Interventions
(any), Attention/cognitive bias
modification
Heeren, A., Coussement, C., McNally, R. J.
Background:
Uncertainty abounds regarding the putative mechanisms of attention bias modification (ABM). Although early studies showed that ABM reduced anxiety
proneness more than control procedures lacking a contingency between cues and probes, recent work suggests that the latter performed just as well as
the former did. In this experiment, we investigated a non-emotional mechanism that may play a role in ABM. Methods: We randomly assigned 62
individuals with a DSM-IV diagnosis of social anxiety disorder to a single-session of a non-emotional contingency training, non-emotional no-
contingency training, or control condition controlling for potential practice effects. Working memory capacity and anxiety reactivity to a speech
challenge were assessed before and after training. Results: Consistent with the hypothesis of a practice effect, the three groups likewise reported
indistinguishably significant improvement in self-report and behavioral measures of speech anxiety as well as in working memory. Repeating the speech
task twice may have had anxioltyic benefits. Limitations: The temporal separation between baseline and post-training assessment as well as the scope
of the training sessions could be extended. Conclusions: The current findings are at odds with the hypothesis that the presence of visuospatial
contingency between non-emotional cues and probes produces anxiolytic benefits. They also show the importance of including a credible additional
condition controlling for practice effects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental
Psychiatry, 50 : 61-67
- Year: 2016
- Problem: Social phobia (social anxiety disorder)
- Type: Randomised controlled trials
-
Stage: Disorder established (diagnosed disorder)
-
Treatment and intervention: Psychological Interventions
(any), Attention/cognitive bias
modification
Kishimoto, T., Krieger, T., Berger, T., Qian, M., Chen, H., Yang, Y.
Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is one of the most common mental disorders in Western
countries. The 12-month prevalence of SAD in China is much lower (0.2%) than in Western countries. However, it translates into an enormous number of
people in China in combination with a huge unmet need for treatment of mental disorders. Internet interventions might be an easily accessible and
cost-effective way to deliver evidence-based treatment for mental disorders to people who otherwise never would have the opportunity to receive
effective treatment. Although there is a wealth of studies that show the efficacy and effectiveness of Internet-based cognitive behavioral therapy
(ICBT) in Western countries, there is a considerable lack of studies that investigate the efficacy of such treatments in non-Western countries. So
far, several studies have evaluated the efficacy of ICBT for SAD in controlled trials in Western countries with promising results. An important
discussion in the field is about the degree of support and guidance needed during Internet-based self-help treatments. The aim of the present study
was to investigate the effectiveness of an established self-help program for increased social anxiety in a Chinese population. Additionally, we
investigated whether minimal guidance by trained therapists had an incremental value regarding symptom improvement and adherence. (PsycINFO Database
Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 85(5) : 317-
319
- Year: 2016
- Problem: Social phobia (social anxiety disorder)
- Type: Controlled clinical trials
-
Stage: At risk (indicated or selected prevention), Disorder established (diagnosed disorder)
-
Treatment and intervention: Service Delivery & Improvement, Psychological Interventions
(any), Cognitive & behavioural therapies (CBT), Technology, interventions delivered using technology (e.g. online, SMS)
Masia-Warner,
C., Colognori, D., Brice, C., Herzig, K., Mufson, L., Lynch, C., Reiss, P. T., Petkova, E., Fox, J., Moceri, D. C., Ryan, J., Klein, R. G.
BACKGROUND: Social anxiety disorder (SAD)
typically onsets in adolescence and is associated with multiple impairments. Despite promising clinical interventions, most socially anxious
adolescents remain untreated. To address this clinical neglect, we developed a school-based, 12-week group intervention for youth with SAD, Skills
for Academic and Social Success (SASS). When implemented by psychologists, SASS has been found effective. To promote dissemination and optimize
treatment access, we tested whether school counselors could be effective treatment providers.\rMETHOD: We randomized 138, ninth through 11th graders
with SAD to one of three conditions: (a) SASS delivered by school counselors (C-SASS), (b) SASS delivered by psychologists (P-SASS), or (c) a control
condition, Skills for Life (SFL), a nonspecific counseling program. Blind, independent, evaluations were conducted with parents and adolescents at
baseline, post-intervention, and 5 months beyond treatment completion. We hypothesized that C-SASS and P-SASS would be superior to the control,
immediately after treatment and at follow-up. No prediction was made about the relative efficacy of C-SASS and P-SASS.\rRESULTS: Compared to
controls, adolescents treated with C-SASS or P-SASS experienced significantly greater improvement and reductions of anxiety at the end of treatment
and follow-up. There were no significant differences between SASS delivered by school counselors and psychologists.\rCONCLUSION: With training,
school counselors are effective treatment providers to adolescents with social anxiety, yielding benefits comparable to those obtained by specialized
psychologists. Questions remain regarding means to maintain counselors' practice standards without external support.
Journal of Child Psychology & Psychiatry
& Allied Disciplines, 57(11) : 1229-1238
- Year: 2016
- Problem: Social phobia (social anxiety disorder)
- Type: Randomised controlled trials
-
Stage: Disorder established (diagnosed disorder)
-
Treatment and intervention: Psychological Interventions
(any), Cognitive & behavioural therapies (CBT), Supportive
therapy, Other Psychological Interventions
Bluett, E. J., Landy, L. L., Twohig, M. P., Arch, J. J.
Exposure-based therapy represents a first line treatment for anxiety disorders,
but it is often underused. One target for improving client engagement is manipulating the theoretical perspective from which exposure is framed.
Ninety-six adults with elevated social anxiety were enrolled in a two-session exposure therapy intervention. Participants were randomized to one of
four conditions: (a) fear reduction/cognitive reappraisal, (b) acceptance, (c) personal values, or (d) experimental control. The first three included
brief psychoeducation and condition-specific experiential exercises and rationale; all four included in-session speech exposure and between session
exposure for homework. Results revealed that compared to the experimental control, the three active conditions reported significantly higher
treatment credibility, initial in-vivo exposure engagement, and improvement in social anxiety symptoms. The three active conditions showed few
differences among themselves. This study demonstrates that a brief exposure intervention using a credible rationale led to initial engagement in
exposure therapy and improvement in social anxiety symptoms. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)
Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy, 30(2) : 77-
93
- Year: 2016
- Problem: Social phobia (social anxiety disorder)
- Type: Randomised controlled trials
-
Stage: At risk (indicated or selected prevention)
-
Treatment and intervention: Psychological Interventions
(any), Exposure therapy, Exposure
and response prevention, Psychoeducation, Other Psychological Interventions
Alfonso, S. V., Alfonso, L.
A., Llabre, M. M., Isabel-Fernandez, M.
Introduction Although there is
evidence supporting the use of equine-assisted activities to treat mental disorders, its efficacy in reducing signs and symptoms of social anxiety in
young women has not been examined. Method We developed and pilot tested Project Stride, a brief, six-session intervention combining equine-assisted
activities and cognitive-behavioral strategies to reduce symptoms of social anxiety. A total of 12 women, 18-29 years of age, were randomly assigned
to Project Stride or a no-treatment control. Participants completed the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale at baseline, immediate-post, and 6 weeks after
treatment. Results Project Stride was highly acceptable and feasible. Compared to control participants, those in Project Stride had significantly
greater reductions in social anxiety scores from baseline to immediate-post [decrease of 24.8 points; t (9) = 3.40, P =.008)] and from baseline to
follow-up [decrease of 31.8 points; t (9) = 4.12, P =.003)]. Conclusion These findings support conducting a full-scale efficacy trial of Project
Stride.
Explore, 11(6) : 461-
467
- Year: 2015
- Problem: Social phobia (social anxiety disorder)
- Type: Randomised controlled trials
-
Stage: At risk (indicated or selected prevention)
-
Treatment and intervention: Complementary & Alternative
Interventions (CAM), Psychological Interventions
(any), Cognitive & behavioural therapies (CBT), Other complementary & alternative
interventions
Azadeh, S. M., Kazemi-Zahrani, H., Besharat, M. A.
Social anxiety is a psychological disorder which has devastative and pernicious effects on interpersonal relationships and
one's psychological flexibility. The aim of this research was to determine the effectiveness of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy on interpersonal
problems and psychological flexibility in female high school students with social anxiety disorder. With a semi-experimental design, the subjects
were assessed using the Social Anxiety Scale and clinical interview. The statistical population of the research was high school female students
studying in 5 areas of Isfahan. 30 individuals were purposively selected as the sample. The subjects of the research were randomly assigned to the
experimental and control groups. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy was given in 10 sessions of 90 minutes in the experimental group and the control
group did not receive any treatment. Pre-test and post-test scores of Inventory of Interpersonal Problems, and Acceptance and Action Questionnaire
were analyzed using multivariate analysis of variance & the results showed that after the intervention, there was a significant difference between
the scores of the subjects in the experimental and control groups. This means that Acceptance and Commitment Therapy can influence interpersonal
problems and their six dimensions and psychological flexibility as well.;
Global Journal of
Health Science, 8(3) : 131-138
- Year: 2015
- Problem: Social phobia (social anxiety disorder)
- Type: Randomised controlled trials
-
Stage: Disorder established (diagnosed disorder)
-
Treatment and intervention: Psychological Interventions
(any), Acceptance & commitment therapy
(ACT)
Heeren, A., Mogoase, C., McNally,
RJ., Schmitz, A., Philippot, P.
People with
anxiety disorders often exhibit an attentional bias for threat. Attention bias modification (ABM) procedure may reduce this bias, thereby diminishing
anxiety symptoms. In ABM, participants respond to probes that reliably follow non-threatening stimuli (e.g., neutral faces) such that their attention
is directed away from concurrently presented threatening stimuli (e.g., disgust faces). Early studies showed that ABM reduced anxiety more than
control procedures lacking any contingency between valenced stimuli and probes. However, recent work suggests that no-contingency training and
training toward threat cues can be as effective as ABM in reducing anxiety, implying that any training may increase executive control over attention,
thereby helping people inhibit their anxious thoughts. Extending this work, we randomly assigned participants with DSM-IV diagnosed social anxiety
disorder to either training toward non-threat (ABM), training toward threat, or no-contingency condition, and we used the attention network task
(ANT) to assess all three components of attention. After two training sessions, subjects in all three conditions exhibited indistinguishably
significant declines from baseline to post-training in self-report and behavioral measures of anxiety on an impromptu speech task. Moreover, all
groups exhibited similarly significant improvements on the alerting and executive (but not orienting) components of attention. Implications for ABM
research are discussed.; Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Journal of
Anxiety Disorders, 29 : 35-42
- Year: 2015
- Problem: Social phobia (social anxiety disorder)
- Type: Randomised controlled trials
-
Stage: Disorder established (diagnosed disorder)
-
Treatment and intervention: Psychological Interventions
(any), Attention/cognitive bias
modification
Britton, J. C., Suway, J. G., Clementi, M. A., Fox, N. A., Pine, D. S., Bar-Haim, Y.
Attention bias modification (ABM) procedures typically reduce anxiety symptoms, yet little is known about the neural changes
associated with this behavioral treatment. Healthy adults with high social anxiety symptoms (n1/453) were randomized to receive either active or
placebo ABM. Unlike placebo ABM, active ABM aimed to train individuals attention away from threat. Using the dot-probe task, threat-related attention
bias was measured during magnetic resonance imaging before and after acute and extended training over 4 weeks. A subset of participants completed all
procedures (n = 30, 15 per group). Group differences in neural activation were identified using standard analyses. Linear regression tested
predictive factors of symptom reduction (i.e., training group, baseline indices of threat bias). The active and placebo groups exhibited different
patterns of right and left amygdala activation with training. Across all participants irrespective of group, individuals with greater left amygdala
activation in the threat-bias contrast prior to training exhibited greater symptom reduction. After accounting for baseline amygdala activation,
greater symptom reduction was associated with assignment to the active training group. Greater left amygdala activation at baseline predicted
reductions in social anxiety symptoms following ABM. Further research is needed to clarify brain-behavior mechanisms associated with ABM training.
(PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved) (journal abstract).
Social Cognitive & Affective
Neuroscience, 10(7) : 913-920
- Year: 2015
- Problem: Social phobia (social anxiety disorder)
- Type: Randomised controlled trials
-
Stage: At risk (indicated or selected prevention)
-
Treatment and intervention: Psychological Interventions
(any), Attention/cognitive bias
modification
Butler, E., Mobini, S., Rapee, R. M., Mackintosh, B., Reynolds, S. A.
This study examines whether combined
cognitive bias modification for interpretative biases (CBM-I) and computerised cognitive behaviour therapy (C-CBT) can produce enhanced positive
effects on interpretation biases and social anxiety. Forty socially anxious students were randomly assigned into two conditions, an intervention
group (positive CBM-I + C-CBT) or an active control (neutral CBM-I + C-CBT). At pre-test, participants completed measures of social anxiety,
interpretative bias, cognitive distortions, and social and work adjustment. They were exposed to 6 x 30 min sessions of web-based interventions
including three sessions of either positive or neutral CBM-I and three sessions of C-CBT, one session per day. At post-test and two-week follow-up,
participants completed the baseline measures. A combined positive CBM-I + C-CBT produced less negative interpretations of ambiguous situations than
neutral CBM-I + C-CBT. The results also showed that both positive CBM-I + C-CBT and neutral CBM-I + C-CBT reduced social anxiety and cognitive
distortions as well as improving work and social adjustment. However, greater effect sizes were observed in the positive CBM-I + C-CBT condition than
the control. This indicates that adding positive CBM-I to C-CBT enhanced the training effects on social anxiety, cognitive distortions, and social
and work adjustment compared to the neutral CBM-I + C-CBT condition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
Clinical Psychology & Neuropsychology, 2(1) : 1011905
- Year: 2015
- Problem: Social phobia (social anxiety disorder)
- Type: Randomised controlled trials
-
Stage: At risk (indicated or selected prevention)
-
Treatment and intervention: Psychological Interventions
(any), Attention/cognitive bias
modification
Coelho, V. A., Marchante, M., Sousa, V.
This study investigated the impact, reported by students and their teachers, of a universal, school-based, social-emotional learning
program, implemented in three school years on the social-emotional competencies of middle school students (7th to 9th grade). It also analyzes, at
post-test and follow-up, the differential results by gender and among students with lower levels of competence. There were 1091 participants, 855
students received the treatment condition (i.e., Project Attitude) and 236 students the control condition. Self-reports identified positive
intervention results in social awareness, self-control, self-esteem, social isolation and social anxiety, teachers reported gains in all dimensions.
These positive effects were stably effective along the three cohorts. Self-reports also identified bigger gains for girls in social awareness and for
boys in social anxiety, self-esteem and leadership. Students with initial lower levels of competence benefited more from the intervention, especially
at follow-up. These results support the effectiveness of social-emotional learning programs.
Journal of Adolescence, 43 : 29-
38
- Year: 2015
- Problem: Social phobia (social anxiety disorder)
- Type: Controlled clinical trials
-
Stage: Universal prevention
-
Treatment and intervention: Psychological Interventions
(any), Other Psychological Interventions