The Effect of Group Positive Self- talk and Relaxation techniques Training and their Combination on Social Anxiety of Nursing Students

Social phobia is a type of anxiety disorder which has been described as a severe and chronic fear of situations leading to humiliation and embarrassment. This study aimed to determine the Influence of group training relaxation techniques and positive self-talk and their combination on social phobia of nursing students. Methods & Material: It was a randomized clinical trial with Pre- test- post-test design and follow-up tests. From a total of 400 nursing student of the school of nursing and midwifery of Najafabad branch of Islamic Azad university during 2013-2012, all students with the diagnosis of social phobia disorder (n=48) were screened by Social phobia questionnaire and allocated to three experimental groups and one control group (n=12 per group). Experimental groups included relaxation, and Positive self-talk training and their combination of them, received 16 sessions of training in the form of two, one-hour sessions per week and control group received no training. Post-test and follow-up (two months later) was performed with the same tool. Data was analyzed by one-way ANOVA, LSD and repeated measures using SPSS-PC (v. 20). ANOVA test results showed that baseline mean scores between the groups were not significantly different (P=0.45). After intervention, comparison of the mean scores of each two experimental groups with the control group showed that the mean score of each experimental group was significantly lower than control group (P<0.001). In follow-up tests, the mean scores o f relaxation group,was significantly lower than p positive self- talk and the mean score of combination of them was significantly lower than the control group (P= 0.03), but there was no significance difference between the groups of p positive self- talk and combination of the two groups. This study emphasized on the influence of cognitive - behavioral training techniques, with a focus on relaxation techniques on reducing symptoms of social phobia. Future same research to study the influence of these techniques on individual persons and comparison of these effects is recommended.