Social anxiety is more than just shyness or awkwardness; for many people, it is a paralyzing disorder that hinders their ability to lead a productive life. For years, mental health professionals have wrestled with the best mode of treatment for SAD, especially as new techniques and medications continue to crop up every year. Now a new study has demonstrated that talk therapy remains the most effective and long-lasting of the major modalities, and that it may be uniquely suited to easing the pain of social anxiety:

CBT and psychodynamic therapy were efficacious in treating social anxiety disorder, in both the short- and long-term, when patients showed continuous improvement. Although in the short term, intention-to-treat analyses yielded some statistically significant but small differences in favour of CBT in several outcome measures, no differences in outcome were found in the long-term.

As psychoanalytic therapists, we have seen firsthand how our patients’ anxieties can ease once the underlying issues behind them have been addressed. Analytic therapy is a powerful way to surface these issues, and to explore what emotions and meanings patients associate with social settings.

If you’d like to begin treatment with the gold standard in therapy, please contact PPSC to find a therapist in New York today.