A Social Anxiety Mobile-Based CBT Intervention for College Students and Therapists: Theoretical Framework

Abstract

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is a debilitating disorder marked by an intense anxiety and fear of negative evaluation in social situations. It has a significant negative impact on college students and college counselling services, which are usually responsible for helping students with mental health problems on campus, face an increasing demand, few resources and thus are often overloaded. Mobile interventions (mhealth) are becoming a very promising solution to face these challenges, facilitating access to mental health interventions. Our study aims to explore college students’ mobile app use and preferences and expose the development process of a mobile app to support face-to-face intervention for SAD. An initial study included 296 college students, from which we identified 11.3% students with SAD (G1); 78.1% students without SAD (G2) and 8.8% students attending therapy (G3). A brief questionnaire explored app use and preferences. To evaluate SAD symptomatology we used the social interaction and performance anxiety and avoidance scale (SIPPAS) and the Sheehan disability scale (SDS). Based on this study and mhealth literature we exposed the developing process of a mobile app for social anxiety. Our results indicate that students are frequent users of mobile apps and tend to consider more important app content, utility and security/privacy, particularly students with SAD, give more emphasis on security/privacy features. Also, all students with SAD attending therapy considered that it would be relevant and that they would adhere to a mobile app to support treatment. Thus, a mobile app for students with SAD under treatment was developed to assist students with homework assignments between sessions. In general, mHealth interventions are well received among students in therapy, however it is important to continue to develop and conceptualize these interventions according to their specific needs and characteristics.