Effectiveness of contextual schema therapy for emotion regulation and painful physical symptoms in individuals with social anxiety disorder: Single subject study

Introduction: Social anxiety disorder is characterized by intense anxiety in social situations where the person is likely to be evaluated by others. Aim: The present study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of contextual schema therapy on emotion regulation and painful physical symptoms in individuals with social anxiety disorder. Method: This study employed an A-B single-subject design. The statistical population included all the people with social anxiety disorder in Mashhad city, in 2021, and 12 people were selected by convenience sampling method. Then, the contextual schema therapy was conducted during 16 sessions of 1 hour once a week for 12 subjects. The Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (2003) and the Visual Analog Scale (1921) were used in this study. The Subjects answered the questionnaires in the baseline phase, at sessions 4, 8, 12 and 16, and at 3-month follow-up. The data were analyzed using visual analysis, improvement percentage, reliable change index, and non-overlapping effect size. Results: The improvement percentage (25%