The Effectiveness of Compassion Mindfulness Training on the Symptoms of Social Anxiety Disorder and Emotional Cognitive Management Strategies in Female Students with Social Anxiety Disorder

The purpose of this research was to investigate the effectiveness of compassion mindfulness training (CMT) in symptoms of social anxiety disorder and cognitive emotion regulationstrategies of female students with social anxiety disorder (SAD) of Shahid Chamran University of Ahwaz. In this research, a single case experimental design of multiple baseline type has been used. All female volunteer students living in the dormitory of Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz who were studying in the academic year of 2016-2017 completed Connor Social Anxiety Questionnaire (2000).Among the students who had the highest score from the cut-off point, four subjects who received a diagnosis of social anxiety disorder according to DSM-5, were selected by purposive sampling. The subjects were trained for 8 weeks and one session per week. They were assessed by Connor Social Anxiety Scale and Garnfsky Emotion Cognitive Regulation Scale (2001), before treatment, during treatment, and after treatment at the two-, four-, and six-week follow-up stages. Data were collected through clinical interview, Special anxiety inventory (SPI) and Cognitive Emotional Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ). Visual analyze, percent of improvement and reliable change index were used to analyze of data. Results showed that compassion mindfulness training (CMT) lead to reducing the symptoms of social anxiety disorder, increasing adaptive cognitive-emotion regulation strategies and decreasing adaptive cognitive-emotion regulation strategies in subjects with social anxiety disorder. Two-, four-, and six-week follow-up indicated relative stability of the changes.