Effectiveness of contextual schema therapy for emotion regulation and painful physical symptoms in individuals with social anxiety disorder: Single subject study

Social anxiety disorder is characterized by intense anxiety in social situations where the person is likely to be evaluated by others.

The present study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of contextual schema therapy on emotion regulation and painful physical symptoms in individuals with social anxiety disorder.

This study employed an A-B single-subject design. The statistical population included all the people with social anxiety disorder in Mashhad city, in 2021, and 12 people were selected by convenience sampling method. Then, the contextual schema therapy was conducted during 16 sessions of 1 hour once a week for 12 subjects. The Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (2003) and the Visual Analog Scale (1921) were used in this study. The Subjects answered the questionnaires in the baseline phase, at sessions 4, 8, 12 and 16, and at 3-month follow-up. The data were analyzed using visual analysis, improvement percentage, reliable change index, and non-overlapping effect size.

The improvement percentage (25%<), the reliable change index (1.96<) and the non-overlapping data (75<) indicated the significant effect of the treatment in increasing the reappraisal subscale of all subjects (except subject 12), reducing the expressive suppression subscale of all subjects and reducing painful physical symptoms of all subjects (except subject 7). The improvement percentage at the follow-up showed that the intervention was effective in increasing the reappraisal, reducing expressive suppression and painful physical symptoms.

Based on the findings, contextual schema therapy was effective in improving emotion regulation and reducing painful physical symptoms by modifying the modes and the third wave methods. Therefore, contextual schema therapy can be suggested as a suitable intervention for social anxiety disorder.