Middle Eastern Journal of Disability Studies

Background & Objective: The most threatening factors of the health and high–risk behaviors have begun during adolescence. Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is one of the most popular psychological diseases among adolescents. Researchers have noted that the major features of social anxiety are stable and progressive fear of social situations, avoiding these situations and also fear from others’ negative assessment. Adolescents suffering from SAD have a weak social relationship, also has less social capability than other adolescents. Achieving social skills are considered as a major base of social development, social relation formation, and social adaptability even mental health protection. On the other hand, recently, acceptance and commitment training (ACT) is one of the developed therapeutic models that are effective for reducing anxious signs in many anxiety disorders. The aim of this research was to compare the effect of social skills training and acceptance and commitment training on social anxiety signs in adolescents.
Methods: This study was a semi experimental research with pretest–posttest design with control group. Statistical society of this research was including all adolescent girls studying at Noshahr city in 2016. For this study, 75 adolescents with social anxiety were selected by random sampling and were randomly assigned in experimental (social skills training and ACT) and control groups, equally 25 people for each group. The training courses were 10 sessions for each of two experimental groups; control group did not receive any training course. Social phobia inventory (SPIN) was the instrument of this research and all the subjects in experimental and control groups completed this inventory at the beginning and at the end of sessions and after 3 months (follow–up level). The gathering data were analyzed by SPSS 22. Descriptive statistics such as average and standard deviation and inferential statistics including analysis of variance (ANOVA) with repeated measure and post hoc tests were used to analyzing data.
Results: Findings using ANOVA showed that there is significant difference among the control and training groups (p<0.001). Also results of the post hoc test showed that the difference among these three groups based on the ACT, social skills training and the control group was significant (p<0.001). But the experimental groups including social skills training and ACT groups had no meaningful difference .
Conclusion: Both social skills training and ACT are useful for reducing social anxiety signs in adolescents; so these two treatment models will be effect on reducing avoidance behaviors and the resignation of these adolescents in social situation as well as improving the individual, family and academic performance of adolescents suffering social anxiety. Also, adolescents with be able to face to variety of social situations without fearing of judging by others and they can be stand in the course of achievement relying on their abilities.