Imagery enhancements increase the effectiveness of cognitive behavioural group therapy for social anxiety disorder: A benchmarking study
Section snippets
Participants
Inclusion criteria were (a) a Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV; APA, 1994) SAD diagnosis, (b) no current suicidal intent, (c) no psychotic illness, and (d) a level of substance use judged by the assessing clinician as unlikely to significantly interfere with engagement in treatment. The Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI PLUS 5.0; Sheehan et al., 2001) was administered by masters- or doctorate-level clinical psychologists to establish Axis I
Baseline characteristics
Pre-treatment demographic and clinical characteristics for the imagery-enhanced and historical control groups are compared in Table 1. The majority of differences were small and not statistically significant, including age, educational achievement, employment status, and clinical features such as the proportion of patients with a comorbid diagnosis. There were no pre-treatment differences on the SIAS, SPS, or BFNE-S (see Table 2). There was a small but statistically significant difference on
Discussion
Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is an early onset and debilitating disorder that tends to be unremitting without treatment (DeWit, Ogborne, Offord, & MacDonald, 1999). CBT is efficacious and effective for SAD but a substantial minority of sufferers do not respond to treatment in community clinics (McEvoy, 2007, McEvoy et al., 2012). In an attempt to improve outcomes, the first aim of this study was to compare the acceptability and effectiveness of an imagery-enhanced CBGT protocol to a large
Conflict of interest
The authors have no conflict of interest to declare.
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