Imagery-based CBT for Social Anxiety Disorder: Piloting a Treatment Augmentation Protocol

St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton

Status: Completed

Conditions: Social Anxiety Disorder

Treatments: Other: Imagery-based CBT; Other: Verbal-linguistic CBT

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT02659436

0986

Details and patient eligibility

About

The purpose of this pilot study is to explore whether there is a differential impact of verbal versus imagery-based cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) as a treatment augmentation strategy for individuals with social anxiety disorder (SAD). Clients who have not demonstrated clinically significant change following group CBT for SAD will receive four additional sessions of either verbal-based CBT or imagery-based CBT. We hypothesize that that individuals who receive imagery-based CBT will experience even stronger improvements and be more satisfied with their treatment than individuals who received traditional verbal-linguistic CBT.

Full description

Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) is a debilitating disorder, marked by significant functional impairment and high personal distress for those who suffer. Psychological treatment for SAD has traditionally been verbal-linguistic cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). However, a significant number of individuals who complete CBT for SAD do not achieve full response and continue to struggle with significant residual symptoms. One innovation that has received attention recently in the literature is using imagery-based CBT as a way to augment treatment outcome in SAD. Results from a pilot and benchmarking study suggest that participants who received imagery-based CBT were more likely to complete treatment than those who received traditional CBT and treatment outcome was strong for both groups, but stronger in the imagery-based CBT group.

However, before re-training hundreds of practitioners in using a completely novel treatment approach, it is important to see if a brief augmentation of traditional CBT programs is effective in producing further change for individuals with residual symptoms after group CBT. It is possible that individuals just require a few more sessions of the same verbal-linguistic CBT to consolidate treatment gains or work on lingering triggers of anxiety. It is also possible that more of the same is not as valuable as offering therapy using a different modality, such as imagery. Therefore, we propose to evaluate a brief imagery-based augmentation of traditional group CBT to explore its effects on further symptom reduction.

Enrollment: 9 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18 to 65 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Completed eight out of twelve sessions of standard verbal-linguistic group cognitive behavioural therapy for social anxiety disorder
• Presented with a Social Phobia Inventory (SPIN) score of greater than 19 post-treatment
• Interested in further treatment

Exclusion criteria

• Has another mental health concern of greater importance than social anxiety disorder

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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9 participants in 2 patient groups

Verbal-linguistic CBT

Active Comparator group

Description:

Participants will receive 4 sessions of verbal cognitive restructuring and exposure therapy delivered in an individual therapy format.

Treatment:

Other: Verbal-linguistic CBT

Imagery-based CBT

Experimental group

Description:

Participants will receive 4 sessions of imagery-based cognitive work and behavioural experiments delivered in an individual therapy format.

Treatment:

Other: Imagery-based CBT