The Effectiveness of Skill Training based on Dialectical Behavior Therapy on emotional regulation, social avoidance and distress in Adolescents with Social Anxiety Disorder

Social anxiety is one of the most common problems among adolescents that significantly impact social development. Dialectical behavior therapy has been studied in a wide range of mental health problems and disorders. This study aimed to determine the effectiveness of skill training based on dialectical behavior therapy on emotional regulation, social avoidance and distress in adolescents with social anxiety disorder.

In this quasi-experimental study with pre-test, post-test with a control group, the statistical population consisted of adolescents aged 12 to 18 years with a social anxiety disorder, who referred to counseling centers in District 6 of Tehran during 2019 years. Thirty subjects who met the study’s input criteria were selected by the available sampling method and randomly divided into two experimental and control groups (n=15). The experimental group received dialectical behavior therapy-based skill training in 12 sessions of 120 min. The emotional regulation, social avoidance and distress were investigated at both groups. Data were analyzed using SPSS-22 software through a covariance analysis.

The mean of age of the subjects was 12.93±3.20 years and 13.00±3.10 years in experimental and control groups, respectively. Following the balanced pre-test scores, the results showed that dialectical behavior therapy could decrease social anxiety disorder (P<0.0001) and negative emotional regulation (P<0.0001 ) in adolescents with social anxiety disorder in post-compared to pre-test, while, no significant difference was found between groups for pre-test and post-test in control group (P>0.05).

Skills training based on dialectical behavior therapy could decrease social anxiety disorder and also emotional regulation in adolescents with social anxiety disorder and considered as an efficient therapy method.