Social phobia is the most common anxiety disorder of our time. But the current treatment regimen for patients with this diagnosis has not proven very effective. Now NTNU researchers believe they have found a cure for social anxiety disorders.

“We’ve set a new world record in effectively treating social anxiety disorders,” says Hans M. Nordahl, a professor of behavioural medicine at NTNU. He has led a project with a team of doctors and psychologists from NTNU and the University of Manchester in England, who examined the effects of structured talk therapy and medication on patients with social anxiety disorders.

Until now, a combination of cognitive therapy and medication was thought to be the most effective treatment for these patients.

The researchers’ results, which were published in the journal Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, show that cognitive therapy on its own has a much better effect in the long term than just drugs or a combination of the two.

Nearly 85 per cent of the study participants significantly improved or became completely healthy using only cognitive therapy.

“This is one of the best studies on social anxiety disorders ever,” says Nordahl. “It’s taken ten years to carry out and has been challenging both academically and in terms of logistics, but the result is really encouraging,” he says.

Nordahl and the rest of the research team have also worked to improve standard cognitive therapy. They have added new processing elements, which have shown greater effectiveness.

“We’re using what’s called metacognitive therapy, meaning that we work with patients’ thoughts and their reactions and beliefs about those thoughts. We address their rumination and worry about how they function in social situations. Learning to regulate their attention processes and training with mental tasks are new therapeutic elements with enormous potential for this group of patients,” says Nordahl.

The researchers now hope to develop standardized cognitive therapy further for patients who suffer from social anxiety disorders.