The Effectiveness of Cognitive-Behavioral Self-Esteem Group Training on Social Anxiety and Mental Health in Social Anxious Adolescent

Subject Areas : Educational

MAHDI HASANVAND AMOUZADEH ¹ , MAHDI AGHILI ² , masomeh HASANVAND AMOUZADEH ³

1 -
2 - ا
3 -

Received: 2017-10-17 Accepted : 2017-10-17 Published : 2013-08-23

Keywords: self-esteem training, social anxiety, mental health,

Abstract :

  The purpose was to compare the effect of cognitive- behavioral self-esteem group training on social anxiety and mental health in second and third grades of socially anxious high school boys in the academic year of 2010–11 (1389-90s.c). The research method was experimental with two groups' prestest-posttest design that 240 students were selected via muflti- stage random sampling and then after the primary administration of SPIN, 30 students with the highest scores were selected and randomly assigned to an experimental (15 boys) and a control group (15 boys). The SPIN (Connor, Davidson, Churchill, Sherwood, Foa, 2000) and General Health Questionnaire (Goldberg & Hillier, 1979) were administered at the pre-and post-tests to all participants. In between the experimental group received cognitive-behavioral self-esteem group training through 13 one and a half hour session twice a week and the control group received no intervention. Statistical analysis revealed that the mean scores of social anxiety in experimental group decreased significantly after receiving self-esteem group training compared to their pre-test and to the control group (P < 0.001). Also, Mann-Whitney test showed significant differences between the two groups in the mean rankings of all subscales of mental health except somatic symptoms at the post-test (P < 0.05). The findings of this study revealed that cognitive-behavioral self-esteem group training can be considered as a significant and effective method in increasing mental health and reducing social anxiety.