Improve Social Anxiety Disorder with Mindfulness
By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.
“regular and consistent mindfulness meditation will help to strengthen your ability to overcome the initial problems that you experience. If you are suffering with the symptoms of social anxiety disorder (SAD), regular practice will eventually improve your self-concept and ability to handle negative emotions. You will also learn how to better respond to troubling thoughts and treat yourself with more compassion.” – Arlin Cuncic
It is a common human phenomenon that being in a social situation can be stressful and anxiety producing. This is particularly true when asked to perform in a social context such as giving a speech. Most people can deal with the anxiety and can become quite comfortable. But many do not cope well and the anxiety is overwhelming, causing the individual to withdraw. Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) is characterized by a persistent, intense, and chronic fear of being watched and judged by others and feeling embarrassed or humiliated by their actions. This fear may be so severe that it interferes with work, school, and other activities and may negatively affect the person’s ability to form relationships.
SAD is the most common form of anxiety disorder and it is widespread, occurring in about 7% of the U.S. population. It has a typical onset in late childhood or young adulthood, prior to the age of 25. Hence, it is particularly widespread among young adults. Anxiety disorders have generally been treated with drugs. It has been estimated that 11% of women in the U.S. are taking anti-anxiety medications. But, there are considerable side effects and these drugs are often abused. There are a number of psychological therapies for SAD. Although, these therapies can be effective they are costly and only available to a small numbers of sufferers. In addition, about 45% of the patients treated do not respond to the therapy. So, there is a need to develop alternative treatments.
Recently, it has been found that mindfulness training can be effective for anxiety disorders including Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD). Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) contains three mindfulness trainings, meditation, body scan, and yoga, and has been shown to be effective in treating anxiety disorders. So, it would be reasonable to expect that MBSR training would improve the symptoms of Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) in young adults.
In today’s Research News article “An open trial of mindfulness-based stress reduction for young adults with social anxiety disorder.” (See summary below), Hjeltnes and colleagues perform a pilot study of the effectiveness of a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program for the treatment of Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) in young adults. They recruited university students, aged 19 to 25 years, who suffered from SAD. The students participated in a standard 8-week MBSR program. They were assessed at the beginning, midway, and at the end of the program for social anxiety, global psychological distress, mindfulness, self-compassion, and self-esteem.
They found that the MBSR program produced a large clinically significant reduction in social anxiety and global psychological distress. They also found significant increases in mindfulness, particularly in the non-judging and non-reacting facets of mindfulness, self-esteem, self-compassion, self-kindness, and common humanity. These results are impressive, but, it needs to be recognized that this was an uncontrolled pilot trial and as such the results could have been due to a number of contaminating factors including placebo effects, experimenter bias, attention effects etc. It remains for a randomized controlled clinical trial to verify these findings. But the magnitudes of the effects are impressive and the fact that MBSR has been demonstrated in controlled trials to reduce anxiety, makes it more likely that the MBSR program was responsible.
Anxiety is a fear of potential future negative events. It is dependent upon future oriented thought processes. Mindfulness training may counteract this by focusing the individual on the present moment. Since, there are no negative events there in the present moment, anxiety dissipates. In addition, mindfulness training improves the individual’s ability to see the negative future projections as they arise in the mind and recognize that they are not based in present reality. This can lead to reduced anxiety and better performance at school, work and other activities and improve the person’s ability to form relationships.
So, improve social anxiety disorder with mindfulness.
“When you develop a mindfulness-based relationship with your inner emotions, your anxiety and fear, you set up a completely different inner environment that greatly facilitates transformation, resolution and healing of the emotional constructs of anxiety and fear. The simple fact is that reactivity inhibits change, while mindfulness promotes change and healing.” – Peter Strong
CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies
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Study Summary
Aslak Hjeltnes, Helge Molde, Elisabeth Schanche, Jon Vøllestad, Julie Lillebostad Svendsen, Christian Moltu and Per-Einar Binder. An open trial of mindfulness-based stress reduction for young adults with social anxiety disorder. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, Volume 58, Issue 1, February 2017, Pages: 80–90, DOI: 10.1111/sjop.12342.
Abstract
The present study investigated mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) for young adults with a social anxiety disorder (SAD) in an open trial. Fifty-three young adults in a higher education setting underwent a standard eight-week MBSR program. Eight participants (15%) did not complete the program. Participants reported significant reductions in SAD symptoms and global psychological distress, as well as increases in mindfulness, self-compassion, and self-esteem. Using intention-to-treat (ITT) analyses, effect sizes ranged from large to moderate for SAD symptoms (Cohen’s d = 0.80) and global psychological distress (d = 0.61). Completer analyses yielded large effect sizes for SAD symptoms (d = 0.96) and global psychological distress (d = 0.81). The largest effect sizes were found for self-compassion (d = 1.49) and mindfulness (d = 1.35). Two thirds of the participants who were in the clinical range at pretreatment reported either clinically significant change (37%) or reliable improvement (31%) on SAD symptoms after completing the MBSR program, and almost two thirds reported either clinically significant change (37%) or reliable improvement (26%) on global psychological distress. MBSR may be a beneficial intervention for young adults in higher education with SAD, and there is a need for more research on mindfulness and acceptance-based interventions for SAD.