Assessing Client Progress Session by Session in the Treatment of Social Anxiety Disorder: The Social Anxiety Session Change Index☆
Section snippets
Participants
Participants were 42 adult clients (52.4% women) with a mean age of 36.95 (SD = 13.97) seeking treatment for social anxiety disorder at either the Anxiety Disorders Clinic of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln (UNL; n =26) or at the Adult Anxiety Disorders Clinic of Temple University (n = 16). The majority of participants (n = 28) were part of a multicenter treatment outcome study. The remaining 14 participants were clients seen as training cases for the larger study, clients who did not meet the
Results
Table 1 presents the means and standard deviations of SASCI and BFNE scores for each session. Table 2 presents the pre-and posttreatment means for each of the outcome variables. Overall, clients improved on all outcome measures. There were no site differences on any of the session or outcome ratings.
A growth model was constructed which simultaneously estimated the change in SASCI and BFNE scores across treatment. Based on this linear growth model, on average, clients began the second therapy
Clinical Utility of the SASCI
If the SASCI is completed by clients prior to each therapy session, it can quickly alert the therapist to changes that have occurred over the week so that the therapist can focus session time on such changes if necessary. This approach allows the therapist to adapt therapy as necessary, which may lead to improved clinical outcome. To illustrate how the SASCI could be used to enhance therapy, four examples are presented in Fig. 2.
Discussion
This study introduces the SASCI, a short, easily administered rating of subjective improvement which can be frequently administered over the course of therapy for social anxiety disorder. Overall, clients rated themselves as improving from session to session across therapy. In this study, the SASCI demonstrated good internal consistency. In addition, change on the SASCI and final session SASCI scores were significantly related to improvement on a number of more commonly utilized, but more
References (38)
- et al.
The validity of the brief version of the Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale
Journal of Anxiety Disorders
(2005) - et al.
Assessment of anxiety in social interaction and being observed by others: The Social Interaction Anxiety Scale and the Social Phobia Scale
Behavior Therapy
(1992) - et al.
Some methodological and statistical issues in the study of change processes in psychotherapy
Clinical Psychology Review
(2007) - et al.
Does the social concerns component of the Anxiety Sensitivity Index belong to the domain of anxiety sensitivity or the domain of negative evaluation sensitivity?
Behaviour Research and Therapy
(2000) - et al.
Development and validation of measures of social phobia scrutiny fear and social interaction anxiety
Behaviour Research and Therapy
(1998) - et al.
Exposure and cognitive restructuring for social phobia: A controlled study
Behavior Therapy
(1989) - et al.
Anxiety sensitivity anxiety frequency and the predictions of fearfulness
Behaviour Research and Therapy
(1986) - et al.
How does anxiety sensitivity vary across the anxiety disorders?
Journal of Anxiety Disorders
(1992) Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders
(1994)- et al.
The scientist practitioner: Research and accountability in clinical and educational settings
(1984)
Beck Depression Inventory manual
What information do clinicians value for monitoring adolescent client progress and outcomes?
Professional Psychology, Research and Practice
Anxiety Disorders Interview Schedule for DSM-IV (ADIS-IV)
A psychometric evaluation of the Beck Depression Inventory-II
Psychological Assessment
Psychological and pharmacological treatments of social phobia: A meta-analysis
Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology
Analysis of change: Modeling individual growth
Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology
Clinicians and outcome measurement: What's the use?
Journal of Behavioral Health Service and Research
Cognitive-behavioral and pharmacological treatment for social phobia: A meta-analysis
Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice
The understanding and treatment of social anxiety: What a long strange trip it's been (and will be)
Cited by (16)
Do depressive symptoms affect the outcome of treatments for SAD? A meta analysis of randomized controlled trials
2020, Clinical Psychology ReviewInitial data on a 5-item measure of OCD symptom severity and change: The obsessive compulsive session change index (OCSCI)
2016, Journal of Anxiety DisordersCitation Excerpt :Currently, brief measures of symptom severity exist for a number of psychological disorders. Moderately brief symptom measures (≤21 items) have been developed for depression and anxiety (Beck & Steer, 1993; Beck, Steer, & Brown, 1996; Hayes, Miller, Hope, Heimberg, & Juster, 2008; Leary, 1983; Meyer, Miller, Metzger, & Borkovec, 1990; Stoeber & Bittencourt, 1998). Additionally, the Outcome Questionnaire (Lambert et al., 1996) is used in many mental health clinics to assess overall psychological health at every session.
Assessment of Social Anxiety and its Clinical Expressions
2014, Social Anxiety: Clinical, Developmental, and Social PerspectivesReturn to Baseline After an Interpretation Training as a Dynamic Predictor for Treatment Response in Social Anxiety Disorder
2023, Cognitive Therapy and ResearchAssessing social anxiety through digital biomarkers embedded in a gaming task
2021, Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings
- ☆
This research was supported by an NIMH Fellowship (1F31MH071071-01) awarded to the first author. We would like to thank Justin Weeks for his help with this project.