The Effectiveness of Brief Interpersonal Psychotherapy on social anxiety disorder and Emotional Expression in college students

The present study was conducted with the aim of determining the effectiveness of Brief Interpersonal Psychotherapy on Social Anxiety Disorder and Emotional Expression in college students.

Study was experimental with a pretest-posttest control group. The population includes all Shandiz college students. 20 participants were selected based on purposive Sampling and randomly placed in experimental and control groups. In this research, Brief Interpersonal Psychotherapy was as an independent variable, and social anxiety disorder and emotional expression were as dependent variables. For collecting data, the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale- self-report and King & Emmons, Emotional Expression Questionnaire was used.  At the start of the procedure, participants answered to the researcher's questionnaires and then after 10 sessions of Brief Interpersonal Psychotherapy, for the second time the scales were completed.

The results of ANCOVA revealed that Brief Interpersonal Psychotherapy was significantly effective on decreasing symptoms of Social Anxiety Disorder in the three subscales (performance anxiety, performance avoidance, and situation avoidance). The scores of the other subscale of LSAS (situation anxiety) and emotional expression participants do not significantly different in pre-test and post-test. The finding indicates that Brief Interpersonal Psychotherapy is a potent treatment for Social Anxiety Disorder.