The Effectiveness of Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy on Sleep Quality of Students with Social Anxiety Disorder

Anxiety disorders are usually accompanied with sleep disorders. Since limited studies have focused on the effectiveness of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) on anxiety-related problems such as sleep disorders, the current research was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of this intervention on sleep problems.

This study was a clinical trial with control and treatment groups. The sample consisted of 24 university students diagnosed with social anxiety disorder (SAD). Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (SIAS) and Pitts-burgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) were used to assess the dependent variables. There were measurements during pre-test, post-test, and follow-up stages.

The treatment could significantly improve the anxiety and sleeping problems in patients with social anxiety. Assessing the aspects of sleep quality showed that the intervention could improve the subjective aspects, latency, dis-turbance, and daily dysfunctions of sleep effectively; however, there was no significant effect on the duration of sleep, taking sleep medications, or sleep efficiency.

Mindfulness treatment could be used for improving sleep quality in patients with social anxiety. This treatment could also improve the aspects of sleep quality which are related to sleep threshold.