Therapeutic efficacy of video feedback in cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy of social anxiety disorder

Social anxiety disorder affects the quality of life of individuals and their functionality in professional, academic, and social dimensions adversely. Cognitive therapy is an effective treatment for social anxiety disorder (CT-SAD). This study was performed to investigate the therapeutic efficacy of video feedback in CT-SAD.The CT-SAD was applied to individuals who constituted the sample of this study (n=13).The changes in the anxiety levels of individuals and the results of cognitive behavioral psychotherapy were evaluated using the evaluation questions in the CT-SAD protocol.In the 2nd session, two social interaction experiments, including self-focused attention, safety behaviors, were performed. These two video recordings were watched in the 3rd session with the participants. According to the data of the two videos, participants rated themselves significantly less anxious, felt that their feared social outcomes occurred to a lesser extent and they used safety behaviors less in the second video of their social interactions than the first video. The effect size demonstrating that the ?self-focused attention and safety behaviors experiment?wasuseful waslarge.In the self-focused attention experiment, it was found statistically significant that individuals focused more on themselves than on the outer focus.Individuals stated that safety behaviors were not effective in reducing anxiety; they did not feel anxiety symptoms when they gave the focus of attention outside, and their performance was better. Safety behavior and self-focused attention have an impact on the development and continuation of social anxiety in certain situations. It can be suggested that video feedback is an effective method with a high level of evidence in changing the negative thoughts and images of individuals with social anxiety.