Text Message Treatment for Social Anxiety

NCT ID: NCT03562650

Last Updated: 2021-01-29

Basic Information

• Recruitment Status: COMPLETED
• Clinical Phase: NA
• Total Enrollment: 97 participants
• Study Classification: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Start Date: 2018-01-27
• Study Completion Date: 2019-03-27

Brief Summary

This is an intervention study designed to evaluate a text message based safety behavior fading treatment for people with social anxiety disorder.

Detailed Description

This study hopes to assess whether a month long text message based safety behavior fading protocol is effective in reducing safety behaviors and social anxiety symptoms. Over the course of four consecutive weeks, text messages will be sent to participants the first day of the study and every other day for four weeks (14 texts in total). These text messages will remind participants to either avoid using their three most engaged in safety behaviors (assessed at pre-treatment) or to stay present-focused. The past week frequency of the participants' safety behaviors will be assessed at the beginning of pre-treatment, post-treatment, and four week follow up assessments Participants will be asked to complete an additional online questionnaire for both a post-treatment and a 4-week post-treatment follow up assessment. We hypothesize that: 1) the safety behavior group will show a greater overall reduction in social anxiety symptoms, 2) that the safety behavior group will show a reduction in the frequency of safety behavior use, and 3) that the present-focused group will show an increase in mindfulness.

Conditions

Social Anxiety

Study Design

• Allocation Method: RANDOMIZED
• Intervention Model: PARALLEL
• Primary Study Purpose: TREATMENT
• Blinding Strategy: SINGLE

Study Groups

Safety Behavior Fading

Participants are asked to pick their three most common safety behaviors from a list and then receive texts every other day for a month reminding them to fade those behaviors.

Group Type: EXPERIMENTAL

Safety Behavior Fading

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Participants are asked to fade their three most common safety behaviors associated with their social anxiety

Present Centered

Participants receive texts every other day for a month asking them to try to focus on the present that day.

Group Type: ACTIVE_COMPARATOR

Present Centered

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Participants are asked to try to increase their focus on the present.

Interventions

Safety Behavior Fading

Participants are asked to fade their three most common safety behaviors associated with their social anxiety

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Present Centered

Participants are asked to try to increase their focus on the present.

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Eligibility Criteria

Inclusion Criteria

• Social Phobia Inventory score > 29

Exclusion Criteria

• receiving therapy
• changes in the past 4 weeks with medication for emotional difficulties
• psychotic symptoms

• Minimum Eligible Age: 18 Years
• Maximum Eligible Age: 65 Years
• Eligible Sex: ALL
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No

Sponsors

Florida State University

OTHER

Sponsor Role: lead

Responsible Party

Jesse Cougle

Associate Professor

Responsibility Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

Locations

Florida State University, Department of Psychology

Tallahassee, Florida, United States

Countries

United States

References

Cougle JR, Mueller NE, McDermott KA, Wilver NL, Carlton CN, Okey SA. Text message safety behavior reduction for social anxiety: A randomized controlled trial. J Consult Clin Psychol. 2020 May;88(5):445-454. doi: 10.1037/ccp0000494. Epub 2020 Feb 27.

Reference Type: DERIVED

PMID: 32105093 (View on PubMed)

Other Identifiers

2017.22461

Identifier Type: -

Identifier Source: org_study_id