Brief Treatment and Crisis Intervention Advance Access originally published online on March 10, 2009
Brief Treatment and Crisis Intervention 2008 8(4):390-401; doi:10.1093/brief-treatment/mhp001
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The Efficacy of Bibliotherapy for Social Phobia
From the Department of Psychology, Korea University
Contact author: Jung-Hye Kwon, Department of Psychology, Korea University, 5-1 Anam-Dong, Sungbuk-Gu, Seoul, 136-701, Korea. E-mail: junghye{at}korea.ac.kr.
This study investigated the efficacy of bibliotherapy (BT) in the treatment of social phobia. Thirty-eight subjects who met the diagnostic criteria for social phobia were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: bibliotherapy with feedback (BT 1), bibliotherapy without feedback (BT 2), and a waiting-list (WL) control condition. Before and after treatment, the Social Phobia Scale (SPS) and Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (SIAS), two of the most widely and consistently used measures of social anxiety, were administered. Those individuals in the BT 1 and BT 2 groups exhibited significant reductions from pre- to posttreatment on the SPS relative to the WL group but not on the SIAS. In addition, there were more individuals who showed a clinically significant improvement (CSI) in the BT 1 and BT 2 groups than in the WL group. However, there were no significant differences between the BT 1 and BT 2 groups. After the BT, 16 of the 38 participants received cognitive–behavioral group treatment (CBGT). After CBGT, those participants who had received BT and shown a CSI exhibited a significantly higher reduction on the SPS than both those participants who had received BT but did not show a CSI and the WL group. The implications for future research are discussed.
KEY WORDS: social phobia, self-help, bibliotherapy