The Effect of Cognitive Behavioral Techniques Training on Reducing Social Phobia in Nursing Students

The multidimensional and complex nature of social phobia disorder necessitates planning and applying different therapies. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of cognitive behavioral techniques training on reducing the social phobia in nursing students.

This study was quasi-experimental with pretest-posttest design and control group. The statistical population was all nursing students of Babol city between 2018-2019. Using simple random sampling, 60 individuals with social phobia were selected according to the cutoff point of the Liebowitz questionnaire (1987). The groups were tested in three time point including before and after intervention as well as in follow-up using the Liebowitz social phobia questionnaire (1987). The experimental group was subjected to 12 sessions of 60-minute group training of social phobia-based cognitive-behavioral therapy and post-test was performed in both groups. Univariate analysis of covariance and dependent-t test were used for data analysis by SPSS 18.

The results showed that the mean scores of social phobia in the experimental group was 38.486 before the test which reduced to 26.062 in posttest and to 25.911 in follow up (p≤0.004).

It can be concluded that cognitive-behavioral group therapy has a significant effect on reducing social phobia of students. This study suggested that the use of cognitive-behavioral group therapy could reduce the social phobia of nursing students.