Developing a group therapy protocol focused on emotion and testing it on the symptoms of people with social anxiety disorder

Previous research has shown that emotion-focused therapy is effective in reducing the symptoms of social anxiety disorder and improving the social efficiency of people suffering from it. On the other hand, the review of studies shows that many treatment approaches will be more effective if they are used in the form of group psychotherapy. But so far, the protocol of this type of treatment has not been developed in such a way that its intervention techniques are suitable and compatible for implementation in the group.

The present study was conducted with the aim of developing a group therapy protocol focused on emotion and trial on the symptoms of social anxiety disorder.

The design of the current research was a type of exploratory combined research that has a qualitative and quantitative nature. The first stage of the research was conducted with a qualitative approach and thematic analysis method. In order to identify themes and draw a network of themes, first 121 related sources were identified and among them, 11 Persian sources published between 1392 and 1401 and 23 English sources published between 2000-2022 were selected. In the quantitative part, the research method was a quasi-experimental design of pre-test-post-test type with a control group and a one-month follow-up. The statistical population of the research included all the clients who referred to the Sense of Presence clinic in Tehran in the second half of 2022. 20 people with social anxiety disorder were selected from among the clients using the available method and were randomly divided into two experimental and control groups. The members of the experimental group were exposed to 16 sessions of emotion-focused group therapy protocol (designed by the researchers). The instrument used in the quantitative part was the social anxiety scale (Connor et al., 2000). For data analysis, thematic analysis method was used in the qualitative part and Variance analysis with repeated measurements was used in the quantitative part.

The findings of the present study in the qualitative part led to the identification of two overarching themes, including emotion-focused therapy and social anxiety, and finally, a 16-session protocol of emotion-focused therapy group. The results in the quantitative part also showed that the effectiveness of the group therapy focused on emotion was significant in reducing all the symptoms of social anxiety disorder, fear, avoidance, Physiological symptoms and the total score of social anxiety (P<0.05).

According to the obtained results, it seems that therapists can use the (researcher-made) emotion-focused group therapy package to treat people with social anxiety disorder.