Social Anxiety Disorder Case Study

Social anxiety disorder, SAD, is a fairly common psychiatric condition in the United States. It is defined by excessive fear of judgment in social and performance situations. SAD is defined by emotional biases in addition to distorted and unrealistic negative self-beliefs. Patients diagnosed with SAD are plagued by internal cues, such as negative thoughts about one’s self, and external cues, such as other’s facial expressions (Goldin & Gross, 2010). Adults with SAD display abnormal attentional processes consisting of increased awareness of others opinions and perceptions followed by avoidance of social situations that may cause anxiety. Patients with SAD show reduced recruitment of brain networks that help in regulating thought processes during
Firstly, the experiment lacked a control group. Also, no other clinical trials were considered for comparison. The size of the experiment, 16 patients, is relatively small. It would be beneficial to the experiment to have a greater number of participants. That being said, the group was well diverse in race and sex. Most were college educated and middle aged therefore I feel it would benefit the experiment if teens, young children, or uneducated people diagnosed with SAD were included. In the regulation task, the patients were told 18 negative self-beliefs and were asked to respond. What were these questions? Did these questions attempt to address different aspects of SAD? Also would having multiple other people in the room during this task affect the participants and their responses? After all, social anxiety takes place in the presence of other people. A second regulation task at another point in time would be good for comparison. The patients were asked to practice what they learned at home. They were told to participate in at home meditations and deep breathing exercises. Whether or not the participants actually did this can affect results of the trial. As a result there is a large margin for error in this experiment. Having Social Anxiety Disorder affect so many important people in my life, it has given me a great interest to research
A., Brown, T. A., & Barlow, D. H. (1994). Anxiety Disorders Interview Schedule for DSM–IV: Lifetime version (ADIS-IV-L). New York: Oxford University Press.
Evans, S., Ferrando, S., Findler, M., Stowell, C., Smart, C., & Haglin, D. (2008). Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for generalized anxiety disorder. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 22, 716–721.
Furmark, T., Tillfors, M., Marteinsdottir, I., Fischer, H., Pissiota, A., Langstrom, B., & Fredrikson, M. (2002). Common changes in cerebral blood flow in patients with social phobia treated with citalopram or cognitive–behavioral therapy. Archives of General Psychiatry, 59, 425– 433.
Goldin, P. R., Manber, T., Hakimi, S., Canli, T., & Gross, J. J. (2009). Neural bases of social anxiety disorder: Emotional reactivity and cog- nitive regulation during social and physical threat. Archives of General Psychiatry, 66, 170–180.
Koszycki, D., Benger, M., Shlik, J., & Bradwejn, J. (2007). Randomized trial of a meditation-based stress reduction program and cognitive– behavior therapy in generalized social anxiety disorder. Behavior Re- search and Therapy, 45,