The Effect of Metacognitive Therapy on Metacognitive Beliefs in Female Students with Social Anxiety ‎Disorder

Abstract The purpose and the background: The aim of this study was to determine the effectiveness of Well’s metacognitive therapy on meta-cognitive beliefs of female students with social anxiety disorder. research method: This research was a quasi-experimental design with a post-test - pre-test and follow-up design with control group. The statistical population of the present study included all female college students of Gachsaran city who were selected using purposeful sampling of 300 students through social anxiety inventory. Then, among those whose anxiety scores were two more deviations than average, 60 were randomly selected and randomly assigned to 30 experimental and control groups. The metacognitive beliefs questionnaire was performed in three stages: pre-test, post-test and follow-up for the groups. After implementing ethical considerations (informed consent, willingness, secrecy), the experimental group received metacognitive therapy and the control group received no treatment. The results were analyzed using descriptive statistics and covariance analysis and analyzed using SPSS software.   Findings: The results of covariance analysis showed a significant difference between the two groups in all of the components in the post-test (P <.05). According to the descriptive indexes, the experimental group had a significant reduction in post test scores compared to the control group. This also applies to research components in follow-up. Therefore, metacognitive therapy significantly improved the meta-cognitive beliefs of patients with social anxiety in the post-test and stability of the treatment results in follow-up. Conclusion: The results showed improvement of symptoms in the post-test and follow-up one month. According to the post-test results, metacognitive group therapy seems to be effective in improving meta-cognitive beliefs in patients with social phobia disorder.   Key words: metacognitive therapy group, metacognitive beliefs, social anxiety