Individual Cognitive Therapy for Professional Actors with Performance Anxiety

Performance anxiety, which could be regarded as a type of social anxiety disorder, is a common and debilitating condition among professional artists. In spite of this, no clinical research has previously been done on treatment methods for professional actors with PA. In the current study A-B single case experimental designs and parametric statistics were used to report the treatment process of five actors with PA who were treated with 11-12 sessions of Individual Cognitive Therapy (ICT). ICT was found to reduce PA in four of the five cases, and resulted in significantly lower frequencies of safety behaviors and negative social thoughts. It was concluded that ICT could be an effective course of treatment for actors with PA.