A Study on the Effect of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy on Students' Body Image Concerns and Social Anxiety

Abstract

Background and purpose: Body image concern is a cause of social anxiety in adolescents, and it involves an intense and disturbing preoccupation with minor or imagined defects in appearance. Research method: The present research aimed to examine the effectiveness of solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT) in improving body image concerns and social anxiety in students. The study was semi-experimental and had a pretest-posttest design with a control group by measuring the baseline, post-intervention, and a 3-month follow-up with the control group. Forty out of 115 students, who were initially interviewed, were randomly selected from second-grade high schools in Alborz province in the academic year of 2019-2020 and assigned to the experimental group (solution-focused brief therapy) and control group (n=20). All the participants completed the demographic questionnaire, the body image concern questionnaire, and Conner's Social Phobia Inventory in three stages. The hypothesis about the effectiveness of the research intervention was implemented using repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA). Findings: The results indicated that there was no significant difference between the two groups in the mean variables of the pre-test stage, indicating the homogeneity of the two research groups in the pre-test stage, but there was a significant difference between the two groups in the post-test and follow-up stages, indicating the effectiveness of the intervention on the variables and the stability of effectiveness in the follow-up stage. Conclusion: According to the results, the above-mentioned therapy can be used as a psychological intervention to reduce students' body image concerns and social anxiety.