Case Study – Social Anxiety

1 Follow the Case Study which is here: (Case Study 4- Social Anxiety Your client, Sarah, is 17 years old. She is in high school and an extremely bright student. She is well dressed and attractive. Her mother has brought her to see you because she has stopped eating and has been sitting in her room staring out the window for hours at a time. Sarah tells you that she has received an invitation to attend the Senior prom. She would love to go, but is paralyzed with fear. She tells you that her only social interaction at school is with her cousin and a family friend because they are the only people that she can talk with since she has known them all of her life. She says that she spends her all of her time at home in her room working on homework and reading books. She asks for your help to decide what to do and says that her parents are worried about her. She hasn’t told them why she has been in distress because she says that they will pressure her to say yes and she is afraid.) 2 Think about the real issue for the case that you selected. What behaviors need to change for the client to resolve their underlying problem. Choose one of the following types of therapy as the basis for your research. (Pick the type of behavioral therapy that is best suited to the behavior that your selected client needs to change). • Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (To change irrational beliefs)

• Exposure Therapy (to work with fears) • Acceleration/Deceleration Behavior Therapy (To work with changing and/or eliminating triggers and/or consequences) • Modeling Therapy or Extinction. (Modeling provides a supportive role model to help overcome fears; works well with social anxiety issues; extinction is about eliminating an undesirable behavior) Remember that this exercise is designed to help you develop your “critical thinking” so that you can apply a specific technique to a specific case. This project also gives you an opportunity to obtain more in depth information about a particular theory or technique. Prepare this project as a written paper How to format your project: • Don’t forget to include a title page with your name! After your title page, your opening paragraph should discuss why you selected the particular case and why you selected the technique or theory that will be used to structure the goals of your treatment plan. Give some details about your interest in the particular theory. • The body of your paper should include your research regarding your selected theory. THIS IS THE “RESEARCH PORTION”. ◦ Use databases to find information about your selected therapy

ACADEMIC SOURCES ONLY. REFERENCE ALL WORK FOUND!!

Do not limit your research to the Internet! As an example, you can research using phrases like “behavioral therapy to address fear” or “behavioral therapy for social anxiety” or “behavioral therapy for addiction”. ◦ You can cut and paste the questions to be answered (about the research and for the treatment portion below) into your written paper, then answer them using the information that you find about the particular therapy and the techniques of the therapy as you apply them to your case. Your last page needs to be your Bibliography where you list your references. Your research should answer these questions: • Who was the individual behind the development of the selected therapy? Provide some background information about this person or persons. • What was the context for development of the theory? (Who, what, where, when, why.) Where was it developed and for what population? What was the identified problem that the theory was developed to resolve? Has it evolved from the original concept? • Has there been any research that supports the effectiveness of your chosen theory? Do the techniques developed work well with all populations or problems? Does the theory work better for a specific population and / or problem? • What are some of the techniques that your selected therapy uses to help clients. In other words, are there particular interventions or activities that will help the client achieve the objective? Give some examples of these particular techniques. The rest of your paper will be focused on the treatment plan that you will develop for your client, based on the information that you have been given in the case study, and using the principles of the theory/technique that you choose. Use your textbook and any other “outside” resources that you find to help you create your treatment plan. The emphasis for this assignment is not on completing an actual treatment plan, but in helping you to understand that it is important to match the solutions found in a particular theory to the “presenting problem” that you wish to solve. The treatment plan should include and answer the following questions (remember to use the principles of the theory that you have selected): What is the presenting problem, according to the client? What behavior, if any, needs to change? (This is the focus of your treatment plan.)