Residential cognitive therapy versus residential interpersonal therapy for social phobia: a randomized clinical trial

Eighty patients meeting DSM-IV criteria for social phobia were randomly assigned to 10 weeks of residential cognitive therapy (RCT) or residential interpersonal therapy (RIPT). Subjects were assessed at pretreatment, midtreatment, posttreatment, and 1 year after end of treatment. The patients reported chronic, highly comorbid social phobia. Most had tried other treatments without success. Existing individual treatment protocols for cognitive therapy and interpersonal therapy were extensively modified for an integrated group, individual, and residential format. The RCT and RIPT patients improved significantly on the primary outcome measures from pre- to posttreatment. No significant differences were observed between treatments. Patients also completed three weekly secondary outcome measures; on one, social role security, RCT was superior to RIPT. The entire sample reported continued improvement from posttreatment to 1-year follow-up, indicating that improvements were robust. RCT in the present trial was associated with less improvement compared to individual CT in other recent trials.