Group social skills training or cognitive group therapy as the clinical treatment of choice for generalized social phobia?

This study focused on determining whether group social skills training (SST) or cognitive-behavioral group therapy (CBT) works best to treat social anxiety in psychiatric patients. Participants were psychiatric outpatients with a Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.) diagnosis of generalized social phobia (GSP). A matching procedure was used to obtain two equivalent samples in both conditions (N = 48). It was shown that both SST and CBT were effective in reducing social and general anxiety, decreasing the severity of psychopathology and increasing social skills and self-control. As for differential effects, patients participating in SST experienced a significantly greater reduction of social anxiety and a greater increase in social skills than those in CBT. Moreover, it was shown that social anxiety and social skills scores of the SST group at follow-up reached the level of a normal reference group, whereas those of the CBT participants improved only to that of nonsocially anxious patients with anxiety disorders. Finally, it was revealed that commitment to and satisfaction with treatment of participants in both conditions did not differ. Keeping in mind that this was a quasiexperimental study, the authors concluded that in a clinical setting, group SST may be the best way to treat psychiatric patients with GSP, where comorbidity is the rule rather than the exception. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.