Cognitive Behavioral Therapy For Social Anxiety Disorders
Medication and therapy are the two most highly prescribed answers for treating mental health disorders such as depression and anxiety. Increasingly, evidence is showing that there is more to treating mental illness than talking and taking a pill. For anxiety of all kinds, various treatment methods are being incorporated into treatment regimes to support recovery. Recent research has found that a combination of therapy and medication is no longer the most effective method. According toKnowridge Science Report, cognitive behavioral therapy alone is the most effective treatment for anxiety- specifically, social anxiety disorder.
In a recent study published inPsychotherapy and Psychosomatics, the website reports, an overwhelming 85 percent of participants struggling with social anxiety disorder “significantly improved or became completely healthy using only cognitive therapy.” Though a small group sample at 100 people, the researchers, as cited by the website, claim to have set a world record in effectively treating social anxiety disorder. Metacognitive therapy is the specific type of cognitive behavioral therapy used for the study. Through the process, therapists are able to work with patients in identifying thoughts, ruminations, worries, and reactions to social anxieties. Patients were equipped with coping tools for regulating their attention, their emotions, and training their brains in new ways.
Why Therapy For Social Anxiety Disorder?
Medication cannot yet target the specific memories, situations, or chromosomes that causes someone to worry about what they do. Some anxiety is genetically inherited while other people’s anxiety is formed in reaction to trauma, bullying, humiliation, or other causes. While medication can change brain chemistry and reduce the intensity of symptoms, it cannot stop the reaction entirely, or cure the psychological cause of it. Cognitive behavioral therapy helps patients target and manipulate their very thought processes, rewiring the way the brain responds.
Enlightened Solutions utilizes the multidisciplinary use of cognitive therapies for treating anxiety disorders and an often co-occurring addiction disorder. For information on our partial care programs of treatment certified for treating dual diagnosis, call us today at 833-801-5483.
