Chiara Massimo’s research while affiliated with Fondazione IRCCS Ca' Granda - Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico and other places

Background Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) or Social Phobia is characterized by fear and anxiety of social circumstances that negatively impact an individuals' occupational and relational life. There are several treatment options for this disorder ranging from pharmacological therapy to psychotherapies. In particular, the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), a form of cognitive-behavioral therapy that practices acceptance and awareness strategies with behavior change strategies in order to increase an individual's mental flexibility, has been found to be effective. Therefore, we aimed to provide an overview of recent studies that examined ACT's efficacy in SAD, also taking into consideration the comparison with traditional Cognitive-behavioral Therapy (CBT) interventions. Methods A bibliographic search on PubMed, EMBASE and Scopus was conducted from inception to the 3rd of February 2022 of all studies investigating the effect of ACT in SAD individuals without any comorbidity. Among the articles retrieved, 11 met the inclusion criteria. Results From the reviewed studies, ACT may be considered a promising treatment of social phobia by improving attentional bias, awareness, emotion regulation, and safety/avoidance behaviors; however, the results have not yet demonstrated a valid alternative to the CBT. Limitations Only four studies considered a follow-up evaluation, which is paramount to exploring the effectiveness of ACT and several studies have a very small sample size. Concerning the review itself we only considered original English articles and we did not measure the risk of publication bias and the risk of bias between studies. Conclusions The results of this study suggest that ACT can be a promising treatment for improving selective psychological problems often observed in SAD. However, larger longitudinal studies further exploring the effectiveness of the behavioral and cognitive “third-wave” psychotherapies, based mainly on acceptance of SAD are necessary.