Comparing the Effectiveness of Emotion-Oriented Therapy and the Unified Trans-diagnostic Treatment on Fear of Negative & Positive Evaluation of Patients with Social Anxiety disorder

Abstract

Objective: Most of the research conducted so far on effective treatments for social anxiety disorder has used traditional cognitive-behavioral therapies. However, recent pathological theories emphasize the role of emotion regulation in the formation and continuation of the symptoms of this disorder. Thus, the study has been conducted to compare the efficacy of emotion- oriented therapy and the unified trans-diagnostic treatment for individuals diagnosed with social anxiety disorder. Methods: This was a quasi-experimental study with a pretest-posttest control design and a three-month follow-up. The statistical population of the study included all the people aged 18-40 who diagnosed with social anxiety disorder from September to March of 2021 in Tehran. A total of 21 patients were selected using purposive sampling and assigned to three groups (two experimental groups and one control group (n= 7 patients in each group). The experimental group 1 and 2 received emotion- oriented therapy in five 120-minute sessions (one session every week) and the unified trans-diagnostic treatment in 12, 120-minute sessions (one session every week), respectively, while the control group did not receive therapy intervention during this period. The Brief Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale (BFNE) and the Fear of Positive Evaluation Scale (FPES) were used for data collection. The repeated measures ANOVA were used to analyze the data in SPSS-24. The significance level of the research was considered to be α=0.05. Results: The results indicated that both emotion-oriented therapy and trans-diagnostic treatment effectively reduced fear of positive evaluation, but unified trans-diagnostic treatment had no notable impact on reducing the fear of negative evaluation in this group (P<0.05). Conclusion: Accordingly, emotion-oriented therapy and unified trans-diagnostic treatment were effective and practical methods for reducing the reduced fear of positive and negative evaluation in this group. It is recommended that psychotherapists and counselors employ these approaches in practice.