Anxiety Treatment Clinics May Invade The Internet

There is much research done on anxiety treatments primarily because anxiety is a far too common malady that afflicts any age bracket. In fact, the University of Queensland is pioneering a research project that is aimed to help teens overcome anxiety and severe shyness. Nowadays, the number of teenagers suffering from social anxiety is increasing prompting pressure on the medical experts to find an effective cure.

The project will assess a new anxiety treatment program for teenagers aged 14 to 17 years old. This treatment is often conducted in anxiety treatment clinics for socially anxious adolescents. The patients will be taught social skills as well as strategies to cope with various social situations that may trigger an attack. By knowing some relevant skills, the program aims to allow teenagers to be more confident in their social dealings.

The study aims to evaluate a new treatment program for socially anxious adolescents aged 14-17 years. The treatment develops social skills and strategies to help adolescents cope better with their anxiety in social situations so that they feel more confident. There will be two major approaches that will serve as the anxiety treatment clinics. Half of the teen respondents will participate in the programs given at the Behavior and Research Therapy Centre in the University of Queensland’s School of Psychology. The other half will receive their treatment on the internet in groups with the help of technological innovations like web cameras.

This new project is a way to further study social phobia, which is believed to be the most common psychological problems among adolescents. This was confirmed by Dr. Lisa Liberman, the Postdoctoral research fellow in the School of Psychology. The unfortunate thing is a good number of young sufferers do not receive any kind of treatments for their social anxiety. This is why the experts are looking on the internet and how it could be a medium of an effective anxiety treatment. This might pave the way for the emergence of valuable online anxiety treatment clinics. The great thing about the internet is that it can reach a wider group of adolescents, offering them much needed help.

Social anxiety or phobia is a serious affliction because it has been found to add to poor performance at school as well as to social alienation and depression. In truth, internet therapy has potential in treating social phobia among adolescents. Many teenagers are regularly using the internet making anxiety treatment online readily accessible. This will increase the chances of youngsters getting immediate help. In this way, even those teenagers living in remote areas can also access such important treatments where participating in anxiety treatment clinics might pose to be difficult. Moreover, youngsters may be more open to joining online therapies whereas they would normally protest against attending regular clinics because they would often feel ashamed or ostracized.

This pioneering treatment project is very special because this is the first time that adolescents will be able to participate in online group treatments. They would have the opportunity to interact with fellow sufferers as well as talk to counselors through heir web cams.