Social Psychodynamic Research

Information from the National Comorbidity Survey showed that social phobia is the third most common mental disorder with a lifetime prevalence of 13.3% (Kessler. 1994). Some people report an onset of social phobia in their mid-teens while others develop the disorder after a stressful or trauma produced experience. This disorder usually follows a chronic course that usually results in considerable impairments in vocal and social functioning ((Davidson, Hughes, George, & Blazer, 1993). There are a number of effective treatments for those suffering from social phobia. Some of these treatments are cognitive techniques, exposure treatments, and social skills training. Cognitive behavior therapy, used for treatment of social phobia, is a part of

the list of empirically validated treatments by the Division 12 Task Force on Promotion and Dissemination of Psychological Procedures of the American Psychological Association (Chambless, 1996). All published treatment studies on social phobia have been based on cross-sectional assessments. This demonstrates a good preservation of gains on average using such interventions.

Mediators of change are those characteristics of a person that are changed by the treatment, which in turn produce the observable treatment affect.

In layman terms, a mediator is the generative mechanism thru which the independent variable is able to influence the dependent variable. Mediating variables, within the therapeutic process, must covary with variables indicating therapeutic change. This Article discusses the social phobia subtype and diagnosis centered on avoidant personality disorder (APD) as potential moderators of change in the treatment of social phobia. Psychologists have found that particular changes in cognitive schemata accounts for therapeutic change. With that being said, researchers in anxiety disorders believe that effective psychotherapy treatment directly modifies the patient’s irrational beliefs or, deactivates them while making other schemata

available.

This article explains that socially anxious individuals believe that negative social events are more likely to occur than positive social events. Socially anxious people tend to be pre-occupied with negative pre-evaluating thoughts then social situations and these negative thoughts are proven to decrease after effect psychosocial treatment. Therapeutic mediation is most commonly used in the treatment of avoidant personality disorder. According to this model, therapeutic mediation happens by changing a patient’s mental representation of “self” in a more positive direction. From the definition of a mediator, a change in treatment is mediated by a reduction in the amplified probabilities and cost related with the fear of the related consequences. This study has tested given examples of exposure treatments, which has indicated that exposure in the absence of negative consequences would alter patients’ percievance of the probability of harm.
Cognitive-behavioral therapy is based on the idea that our thoughts cause our feelings and behaviors.

The benefit of this fact is that we can change the way we think to feel and act better even if our situation does not change. Cognitive-behavioral therapy is considered among the most rapid in terms of results obtained. Cognitive-behavioral therapy is a form of psychotherapy that emphasizes the important role of thinking in how we feel and your perception of the world around. This article explains that cognitive-behavioral therapy and exposure therapy go hand and hand together and is proven to be significantly effective when treating social phobia across the board. Cognitive-behavioral therapy helps to diminish the belief that negative social events are more likely to occur than positive social events associated with social phobia. The Cognitive-behavioral therapy accounts for the relation between the predictor and the criterion treatment of social phobia. As a patient is able to change the negative cognitions into positive adaptive reasoning associated with their avoidant personality disorder, patients are able to be more objective to the exposure therapy

process.

This article indicates that social phobia treatment outcome seems to be moderated by treatment expectancy, homework compliance, and depression (Chambless, Tran, & Glass, 1997). However, most studies on treatment moderators of social phobia have focused on the social phobia subtypes and the additional diagnosis of avoidant personality disorder (APD) as potential predictors of poor social phobia treatment outcomes.