Improve Adolescent Social Anxiety Disorder with Mindfulness
By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.
“The power of a mindfulness practice, however, may come in the realization that one can live a meaningful life even with social anxiety.” – Jason Drwal
It is a common human phenomenon that being in a social situation can be stressful and anxiety producing. 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.
Anxiety disorders have generally been treated with drugs. But there are considerable side effects and these drugs are often abused. There are a number of psychological therapies for anxiety. But, 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) in adults. But, social anxiety is very common in adolescents. The question remains of the effectiveness of mindfulness training on the social anxiety of adolescents.
In today’s Research News article “Mindfulness-Based Interventions for Adolescent Social Anxiety: A Unique Convergence of Factors.” (See summary below or view the full text of the study at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01783/full?utm_source=F-AAE&utm_medium=EMLF&utm_campaign=MRK_1391749_69_Psycho_20200730_arts_A) Carlton and colleagues review and summarize the published research studies on the effectiveness of mindfulness-based interventions on social anxiety disorders in adolescents.
They report that there are very few published studies on the effectiveness of mindfulness-based interventions on social anxiety disorders in adolescents. What studies are available have small sample sizes and they lack appropriate control conditions. As such, conclusions must be considered preliminary. Nevertheless, mindfulness-based interventions have been shown in a few studies to produce significant increases in positive emotions and significant reductions in anxiety symptoms in adolescents. Lumped into these anxiety disorders is social anxiety. But social anxiety is not singled out. It is clear from these studies that mindfulness-based interventions can be effectively used for adolescents.
Hence the existing research studies suggest that mindfulness-based interventions may be effective for social anxiety disorders in adolescents. But definitive evidence is not present. This suggests that a large randomized controlled clinical trial should be performed of the effectiveness of mindfulness-based interventions on social anxiety disorders in adolescents.
So, improve adolescent social anxiety disorder with mindfulness.
“dealing with social anxiety, it is much more useful to practice mindful focus during conversations and other situations around people in which we are uncomfortable.” – National Social Anxiety Center
CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies
This and other Contemplative Studies posts are also available on Google+ https://plus.google.com/106784388191201299496/posts and on Twitter @MindfulResearch
Study Summary
Carlton CN, Sullivan-Toole H, Strege MV, Ollendick TH and Richey JA (2020) Mindfulness-Based Interventions for Adolescent Social Anxiety: A Unique Convergence of Factors. Front. Psychol. 11:1783. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01783
ABSTRACT
Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is a debilitating and often chronic psychiatric disorder that typically onsets during early adolescence. Cognitive behavior therapy (CBT), the current “gold-standard” treatment for SAD, tends to focus on threat- and fear-based systems hypothesized to maintain the disorder. Despite this targeted approach, SAD ranks among the least responsive anxiety disorders to CBT in adolescent samples, with a considerable proportion of individuals still reporting clinically significant symptoms following treatment, suggesting that the CBT-family of interventions may not fully target precipitating or maintaining factors of the disorder. This gap in efficacy highlights the need to consider new therapeutic modalities. Accordingly, this brief review critically evaluates the emergent literature supporting the use of mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) for treating adolescent SAD. MBIs may be particularly relevant for addressing maintaining factors within this diagnosis, as they may target and interrupt cycles of avoidance and de-motivation. Despite limitations in the relative lack of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) on this topic, a unique convergence of factors emerge from the extant literature that support the notion that MBIs may hold particular promise for attenuating symptoms of SAD in adolescents. These factors include: (1) MBIs demonstrate the ability to directly engage symptoms of SAD; (2) MBIs also show consistent reduction of anxiety, including symptoms of social anxiety in adolescent populations; and (3) MBIs demonstrate high rates of feasibility and acceptability in anxious adolescent samples. We briefly review each topic and conclude that MBIs are an encouraging treatment approach for reducing symptoms of social anxiety in adolescents. However, given the lack of research within MBIs for adolescent SAD in particular, more research is needed to determine if MBIs are more advantageous than other current treatment approaches.