The effect of mindfulness and acceptance-based group therapy on decreasing fear of negative evaluation in patients with social anxiety disorder

The present study was carried out to examine the effectiveness of Mindfulness and Acceptance-Based Group Therapy on decreasing fear of negative evaluation in patients with social anxiety among female students.
In the first stage, Social Phobia Inventory (SPIN) was administrated to 402 female student of Shahed University, In the second stage 24 socially anxious student screened by SPIN and (Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-I) (SCID-I) were randomly assigned to experimental group (13 subjects) and control group (11subjects). Then Mindfulness and Acceptance-Based Group Therapy administered to the experimental group, while control group didn`t attend in any treatment session. All participants completed measure of brief version of the Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale at pretreatment and post treatment and three month follow up.
The result of Mann Whitney test revealed significant reduction in fear of negative evaluation in experimental group than control group (p In sum, Mindfulness and Acceptance-Based Group Therapy can improve fear of negative evaluation among a sample of Iranian female students. Therefore a ground has been provided to apply this approach preliminary in psychological centers on patients with social anxiety disorder.