The Relationship Between the Therapeutic Alliance and Social Anxiety Symptoms Along the Course of Internet-Delivered Cognitive Behavioral Treatment

Abstract

The therapeutic alliance is a consistent predictor of treatment outcome. In the present study, we examined whether the therapeutic alliance is associated with symptoms of social anxiety along the course of internet-delivered cognitive behavior therapy (ICBT) for social anxiety disorder (SAD). We examined data from a large treatment trial (n = 182) in which individuals with SAD reported on their social anxiety and alliance with the therapist each week during the treatment (for 11 weeks). We examined the total variance in alliance as well as within- and between-individual variances separately. Consistent with our hypotheses, we found that the total variance in alliance predicted the total variance in social anxiety in the following week. In addition, we found that within-individual variance in alliance was negatively associated with within-individual variance in social anxiety (in the following week). Thus, weekly increases in alliances were associated with weekly reductions in social anxiety in the following week. Finally, we found that between-individual variance in alliance was positively associated with between-individual variance in social anxiety such that individuals who were more socially anxious created stronger alliances with their therapists over the course of treatment. Our findings suggest that the therapeutic alliance is important in ICBT for SAD, that separating variance into within and between components may help identify different psychological processes, and that improving within-individual alliance may lead to reductions in symptoms of social anxiety.