Social Anxiety Disorder: Treatment Targets and Strategies

Moderators of Change in Social Anxiety during CBT in a Transdiagnostic, Naturalistic Treatment-Seeking Sample

“…This moderating result was apparent even after controlling for depression, which accounts for the confounding relationships among SA, rumination, and depressive symptoms. Rumination (often referred to as post-event cognitive processing or post-event rumination in SAD) has been suggested as a possibly distinct cognitive component of the pathology of SAD (Hedman et al, 2013;Hofmann, Bullis & Gutner, 2013), but has not been widely studied within the context of SAD or SA. The current study results suggest that given the fact that participants with high levels of rumination showed significant improvements with treatment, ruminative symptoms are not necessarily an impediment to treatment effectiveness.…”

“…Several successful and empirically-supported treatment options exist for the disorder, with the most support gathered for both individual and group formats of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) compared to wait-list, control conditions, and supportive therapy (Hofmann, Asnaani, Vonk, Sawyer, & Fang, 2012). However, non-response rates following treatment still lie in the range of 15-30% by most empirical accounts (e.g., Hofmann et al, 2013), indicating a fair proportion of individuals with SAD who do not respond to CBT, and certainly variation in the degree of response for the vast majority of patients who are classified as responders. Thus, there remains a significant need to examine the factors underlying effective treatment for social anxiety (SA) symptoms, including variables that may moderate treatment outcome (i.e., conditions under which change in symptoms occur) in individuals with SA symptoms.…”