Reducing social anxiety and boosting self-esteem among adolescent girls: the impact of a behavioral-cognitive counselling programme
Authors:   Al Balqa Applied University, Hamdan Falastine Rafiq Salem 
Published: January 2024

Introduction. Physical, mental, and emotional development all speed up significantly during adolescence. Girls' social anxiety and low self-esteem in particular have been identified as major causes for concern among the many difficulties that teenagers confront nowadays. Increases in peer pressure, cultural expectations, and puberty can all contribute to an already common sense of inadequacy and social anxiety among adolescents. The study explores the feasibility of a tailored intervention to solve these problems. By analysing the effectiveness of a behavioral-cognitive counselling method, this study intends to offer light on strategies that help build emotional resilience and improve self-worth in adolescent girls. The purpose of this research was to determine if a group cognitive-behavioral counselling programme for adolescents was successful in reducing social anxiety and boosting self-esteem. Materials and methods. 84 high school students with high scores on a social anxiety scale participated in the study. Throughout the course of the study, a number of instruments were used, including a social anxiety scale, a self-esteem measure, and a counselling programme, all with the goal of achieving the study's stated aims. A total of (40) students were assigned to the experimental group and received the joint cognitive-behavioral counselling programme, whereas (44) students were assigned to the control group and received no intervention whatsoever. Mathematical means and standard deviations of pre and post-measurements were calculated based on students' responses to social anxiety and self-esteem scales in connection to group classification to answer the research objectives. In addition, the joint single-covariance analysis (ANCOVA) was used to evaluate the differences in total score between the experimental and control groups. The results. The experimental group (40 students) who participated in the counselling programme showed significant improvement in their social anxiety symptoms, with an average post-test score of 16.90 compared to a pre-test average of 10.66, while the control group (44 students) showed no significant change in their scores. According to the analysis of variance, which showed a statistically significant difference at the 0.000 level, the counselling programme was responsible for 80.1% of the decrease in social anxiety shown in the experimental group. The post-test average for the experimental group was 16.14 on the measure of self-esteem, while the average for the control group was 10.71. The related variance indicated that the counselling programme was responsible for 76.5% of the observed improvement in self-esteem in the experimental group. This progress was made possible by the program's incorporation of techniques including cognitive reconstruction, role playing, and problem solving. The results of this study are consistent with those of other studies, demonstrating the importance of cognitive-behavioral therapy in improving students' psychological and social health. Conclusions. Adolescent girls can benefit from a behavioral-cognitive counselling approach, as shown in this study, which shows promise in reducing social anxiety and boosting self-esteem. Results from the experimental and control groups showed that the girls who participated in the counselling course benefited greatly from the individualised intervention. Proof of the programme's efficacy in helping high school students is found in the reduction of social anxiety symptoms and the rise in self-esteem seen in the experimental group. Based on these encouraging findings, cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) should be seriously regarded as an integral part of school-based mental health efforts aimed at addressing the pervasive problems of social anxiety and low self-esteem among adolescent girls.