Effectiveness of transdiagnostic treatment on the emotional-based symptoms of the student with social anxiety disorder: A randomized controlled trial in Iranian sample

Social anxiety disorder is a type of anxiety disorder. Recent research has shown that difficulty in regulating emotion is the underlying mechanism of mood disorders and anxiety. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of transdiagnostic treatment on the social anxiety of students.

The method of the present study was quasi-experimental of pretest-posttest with follow-up. 24 participants with inclusion criteria, by the available sampling method, were divided into experimental and control groups randomly. The instruments used in this study were the Cognitive Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ), Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DRES), Social Phobia inventory (SPIN). After collecting data, statistical analysis was performed by a repeated-measures method by spss-24 software.

The results of the present study showed that the implementation of transdiagnostic treatment can improve emotion-based symptoms in people with social anxiety. Meta-diagnostic treatment explained 59.8% of the variance of post-test changes compared to the pre-test. Therefore, the use of this united protocol improved emotional adequacy and emotion regulation in students with social anxiety in Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences (p> 0.05).

According to the results, it can be said that transdiagnostic treatment reduces social anxiety, improves adequacy, and regulates emotion. Therefore, the method used in the present study can be considered as a suitable method for psychological interventions in students with social anxiety and emotional problems.