Peer Scenario And Therapy Choice Discussion

Unit 13

2 Reponds
Discussion /Participation Prompt [Due Sunday]
Please respond to at least 2 of your peers posts with substantive comments using the following steps:

Substantive comments add to the discussion and provide your fellow students with information that will enhance the learning environment.
References and citations should conform to APA standards.
Remember: Please respect the opinions of others, even if their views differ. In other words, disagree professionally and respectfully.
Plagiarism is never acceptable give credit when credit is due – cite your sources.

Respond to :
Julie
DB Unit 13 Scenario Therapy Choice Discussion
Social anxiety, also known as social phobia, is a common, chronic disabling mental health disorder.Medications have shown great efficacy for treating social anxiety, but (CBT) has been studied and found to very effective in the non-pharmacologic management and treatment of social anxiety. During CBT, a therapist and patient work together to learn cognitive and behavioral competencies to help adapt and function within their relationships and world around them (Heimberg, 2002).
CBT implements several techniques to help treat and overcome social anxiety.Exposure is used to help patient face their fears and become conditioned.While implementing this technique, patients must never be forced to do something they are not ready to.Patients must during exposure therapy to ensure they do not distract themselves to avoid paying attention fully (Heimberg, 2002).
Another technique used during CBT for social anxiety is relaxation training.Relaxation training for social anxiety is only effective if used as applied relaxation.In applied relaxation, patients learn to attend to their physical symptoms of anxiety and then learn to relax in using relaxation skills during anxiety provoking situations (Heimberg, 2002).
When assessing and creating a treatment plan for patients with social anxiety disorder, it is important to assess for avoidant personality disorder as it highly comorbid with social anxiety disorder.It has been shown in studies that patients that have both these diagnoses are on the most severe end of the social anxiety continuum (Heimberg, 2002).It is important as to find different ways in which to treat individual patients.

Antonia
Hannah is a young female dealing with social anxiety disorder and she was referred by her general practitioner to a therapist to address the increased anxiety in social situations. Patient stated that the social anxiety started when she was 19 years of age as soon as she finished high school. The patient states that her anxiety became worse since she moved out of her parents house for the first time, but she has not informed anyone about it. Patient reports that she does not have any friends, but her parents often visit her. She is a freelance photographer, but she gets anxious when she is around her clients and others therefore, she ends up cancelling or missing out of work with her clients. She decided to go and see a therapist even though she is scared, but she needs to work on this social anxiety. The patient explained that she gets hot and sweaty as she wears black clothes and lots of layers to be invisible in public like a weirdo. She is afraid of loosing more of her friends because she becomes uncomfortable and socially anxious when she is in public.
In this case study, it is clears thats the patient is suffering from social phobia, and she has made the first step of seeking psychotherapy treatment from a therapist who will assist her in dealing with social anxiety. According to Butler et al. (2020) social phobia consists of an individual having persistent fear or meeting other people usually in small groups or doing certain acts in public places such as eating in a restaurant, public speaking or encountering other people in public. The thought of participating in these activities gives them anxiety and they would use every possible excuse to avoid these phobic situations (Butler et al. 2020). Telman et al. (2020) also stated that these patients often present with the following symptoms to include sweating, blushing, muscle tension, pounding heart, dry mouth, nausea, urgency of masturbation, shaky voice or trembling when they are exposed to social events or situations.
The patient in the case study is clearly suffering from social phobia and she would greatly benefit form cognitive behavioral therapy. The therapist would start the session with asking the patient to complete the (SPIN) questionnaire which is a self-rated questionnaire that measures the three commonly seen types of social anxiety disorders to include the patients fear, phobic avoidance; and autonomic symptoms such as blushing, sweating and trembling (Butler et al., 2020). This would allow the therapist to understand the patient better. Telman et al. (2020) states that individuals suffering from social anxiety disorder would greatly benefit from cognitive behavioral therapy as they relearn how to interact with the environment. The cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) would focus on targeting avoidance through exposure and changing distorted thinking patterns through cognitive restructuring methods which would decrease the individuals social anxiety and increase their quality of life.