What is it about?
SSRI and Cognitive therapy has been the most effective treatments for social phobia, but we wanted to test if the combination of those two treatments could increase the outcome in social phobia patients and avoidant behaviour. The results showed that by combining the treatments, the effects were not improved, rather SSRI seems to detract the effect of Cognitive therapy.
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Why is it important?
The study was the first to show that combining SSRI and CT is not improving the outcome, which seems contraintuitive for therapists in mental care. Combining these two treatments is not recommended.
Perspectives
This is an important study that shows that Cognitive therapy should not be combined with drugs in the treatment of social phobia and avoidance. The study is scientific proof that goes against the widespread practice in mental health to combine treatments in anxiety disorders. Cognitive therapy works best as a separate treatment for social anxiety disorder.
Hans Nordahl
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Paroxetine, Cognitive Therapy or Their Combination in the Treatment of Social Anxiety Disorder with and without Avoidant Personality Disorder: A Randomized Clinical Trial, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, January 2016, Karger Publishers,
DOI: 10.1159/000447013.
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