Investigating the efficacy of emotion-focused therapy on social anxiety, emotional regulation and quality of life in music students with traces of social anxiety disorder

Emotion-Focused Therapy introduces emotion as the basis of experience in relation to adaptive and non-adaptive functions. Therefore, this type of treatment can help to improve the quality of life and reduce the anxiety level of students by reducing the intensity of negative emotions before the response (emotional regulation). There is a gap in research regarding the effectiveness of emotion-oriented therapy on social anxiety, emotional regulation and quality of life of students.

The present study was conducted with the aim of determining the effectiveness of emotion-focused therapy on social anxiety disorder, emotional discipline and quality of life of music students with traits of social anxiety disorder.

The design of the current research was semi-experimental, of pre-test-post-test type with a control group. The statistical population of the current research was all music students of the University of Arts in 2019. From this statistical population, a number of 30 people were selected in a targeted manner from the available type and were randomly assigned in two groups of 15 people (Emotion-Focused therapy group) and control. In the intervention sessions of Emotion-Focused therapy from the therapy protocol of Johnson (2004) and to collect data from the social anxiety scale (Connor et al., 2000) and two questionnaires of cognitive regulation of emotion (Garnefski, Kraaij & Spinhoven, 2002) and quality of life (Ware & Sherbourne, 1992) was used. Covariance analysis and SPSS26 software were used for data analysis.

The findings of the present study showed that Emotion-Focused therapy was effective in reducing the symptoms of social anxiety disorder, improving the ability to regulate emotions and improving the quality of life of music students of the University of Art (P<0.01).

According to the findings, it is concluded that emotion-focused therapy can reduce the symptoms of social anxiety, improve the ability to regulate emotions and the quality of life of students by emphasizing the identification of emotional needs, focusing on the important role of emotions in interpersonal relationships, and teaching emotion management. Therefore, repeating the experiment in other groups and more samples is suggested.