Comparing the effectiveness and durability of three ways of treatments in social anxiety disorder

Introduction: Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) as the chosen therapy of social anxiety disorder (SAD) although received increased support, it has some fluctuations. Therefore, the purpose of current study is to determine and compare the effectiveness and durability of three CBT patterns based on "exposure to self”, “exposure to situation" and “exposure to self-situation" on treatment of SAD. 
Method: In this quasi-experimental research, 24 subjects with SAD were selected based on Social Phobia Inventory (SPIN) and Structured Clinical Interview for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorders (SCID-IV). Eighteen subjects were randomly assigned to three experimental groups (each group consisted of 6 subjects) and six subjects were assigned to control group and four groups were demographically the same. Three experimental groups treated by one of the three CBT models and the control group waited. Subjects completed SPIN, LSAS-SR, BFNE, SIAS, SPS, and NSPS scales in addition to the scale of SPLN, before starting and after finishing in the period of a month and a half, four months and 1 year after ending of treatment/ waiting.
Results: The comparison of four groups based on the difference mean of pre and post test showed that three CBT patterns have a meaningful difference with the control group but they have no meaningful difference with each other. Of course, the difference mean of the "exposure to self” group had a significant difference with control group in all dependent variables (the score of 6 scales of social anxiety), whereas, the difference mean of the “exposure to self-situation” and “exposure to situation” groups had a significant difference with control group in some of the six scales. The results show that all three aforementioned therapeutic models had effectiveness and durability but “exposure to self” group had superiorities over the other two groups.
Discussion and Conclusion: The results show that all three CBT models are useful in Iranian clinical sample but, “exposure to self” group had superiorities than the two other groups in some evidences.