Online Self-Help for Social Anxiety (for those living in Australia)

jereminho

Member
ONLINE SELF-HELP FOR SOCIAL ANXIETY (PAID)​

Hey everyone,

My name’s Jeremy and I’m a fourth year PhD student in Clinical Psychology at Flinders University (in Adelaide). I wanted to make a post here because currently we are running a study that involves a 2-week online intervention aimed at reducing social anxiety. The study involves two parts:

Part 1: A screening questionnaire to determine if you're eligible. It will take about 5 minutes to complete. If you are eligible, you will be asked for your contact information if you are interested in doing Part 2.

Part 2 ($40 reimbursement): At an arranged time in the near future, you will commence with a 30-minute phone interview with the friendly lead researcher. This interview will be about your mental health. Then, you will do daily online exercises for the next 2-weeks. These exercises will take about 15-minutes on each occasion, and they are aimed at reducing your social anxiety. In addition, you will complete questionnaires at various time points: before, during, and after the 2-week intervention. At the end, you will receive a $40 Woolworths gift voucher. To participate, you need to be 18+, living in Australia, and not currently receiving weekly/fortnightly therapy specifically targeting social anxiety.

You might be interested in a bit more information about the online self-help techniques. Well, essentially there are two techniques: one is cognitive restructuring and the other is self-compassion. Cognitive restructuring is a technique some of you might be familiar with, as it is a component of the gold standard treatment for social anxiety: Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. This technique emerged from the idea that social anxiety is maintained by negative thinking about things like the probability of social events going really badly. As such, the technique involves learning how to change the way we think in order to make it more balanced and realistic.

The other technique involves compassion which has been practiced for thousands of years in the east (mainly in Buddhism), but has only recently begun to receive attention in the west. People with social anxiety tend to be highly self-critical, and this self-criticism maintains feelings of anxiety. As such, replacing self-criticism with self-compassion may help to reduce social anxiety.

I am interested in comparing these techniques in terms of their efficacy in reducing social anxiety. This will advance our knowledge on what works in the treatment of this disorder. If you partake, you will be randomly assigned to one of the two groups and engage in the practices for 2-weeks.

If you’re interested in partaking and want to read more, please follow this link: https://qualtrics.flinders.edu.au/jfe/form/SV_2n5EuzCyaUH46qN

Also, feel free to email any questions to me at [email protected].

Thanks and good luck everyone!
 
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