Clinical trial NCT02400918: Self-help for Treating Social Anxiety Disorder: An Evaluation of a Mindfulness and Acceptance-based Approach
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Phase: NA
Conditions: Anxiety
Shyness
Lead sponsor: Wilfrid Laurier University
Sponsor class: OTHER
First posted: 2015-03-27
Enrollment: 170
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 18
Standard ages: ADULT
OLDER_ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: yes
Allocation: RANDOMIZED
Intervention model: PARALLEL
Primary purpose: TREATMENT

Brief summary: Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is the most common anxiety disorder, affecting up to 10% of the population and causing significant distress. Fortunately, there are effective interventions including cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). However, only about a third of people with SAD seek treatment. There are a number of barriers to seeking treatment, including cost, availability, and stigma. Self-help may be one way to reach people who may not otherwise present for treatment. Research on self-help books for SAD based on CBT has yielded promising results. However, no research to date has examined the efficacy of ACT-based self-help for SAD. The primary purpose of the present study is to evaluate The Mindfulness and Acceptance-based Workbook for Social Anxiety and Shyness (Fleming \& Kocovski, 2013), an ACT-based self-help book. Socially anxious participants will be randomly assigned to receive the workbook or be placed on a waitlist. It is hypothesized that workbook participants will report significantly reduced social anxiety at the end of eight weeks compared to waitlist participants. The secondary purpose is to evaluate how the treatment works. Increases in mindfulness and acceptance have been shown to lead to reduced social anxiety. These same variables will be examined in the present study. Finally, this research aims to examine variables that can predict who may do well in treatment. Given that two-thirds of people who meet criteria for this disorder will not seek traditional treatments, it is important to develop and evaluate alternative treatments, including those based on self-help.


Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* must be seeking help for shyness/social anxiety

Exclusion Criteria:

-

Primary outcomes:
measure: Change from Baseline to 4 and 8 weeks later in The Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (Liebowitz, 1987)
timeFrame: Baseline and 4 weeks and 8 weeks
measure: Change from Baseline to 4 and 8 weeks later in the Freiberg Mindfulness Inventory (Buchheld, Grossman, & Walach, 2001)
timeFrame: Baseline and 4 weeks and 8 weeks
measure: Change from Baseline to 4 and 8 weeks later in the Social Anxiety - Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (MacKenzie & Kocovski, 2010)
timeFrame: Baseline and 4 weeks and 8 weeks
measure: Change from Baseline to 4 and 8 weeks later in the Beck Depression Inventory (Beck, Steer, & Brown, 1996)
timeFrame: Baseline and 4 weeks and 8 weeks
measure: Treatment credibility will be assessed using the scale by Devilly and Borkovec (2000) one week following the start of treatment (consistent with Nordgreen et al., 2012).
timeFrame: One week following the start of treatment
Secondary outcomes:
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Waterloo
country: Canada
facility: Wilfrid Laurier University
state: Ontario
Study officials:
affiliation: Wilfrid Laurier University
name: Nancy L Kocovski, PhD
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References: