Treatment change in adolescents with social anxiety disorder: insights from corpus linguistics

Despite the efforts made in Clinical Psychology, the remission rates of social anxiety disorder are still moderate, which might stem from a lack of sensitivity in the psychological treatment outcome measures. New interdisciplinary perspectives such as the joint efforts of Corpus Linguistics and Psychology are, therefore, being sought. The purpose of this study is to explore if the linguistic insights provided by Corpus Linguistics are of any help when assessing sensitivity on treatment in adolescents with generalized social anxiety disorder. Results revealed the relevance of analysing adolescents’ written texts for treatment outcome analysis by examining adolescents’ texts based on the triple-response-system approach (cognitive, somatic and behavioural symptoms) and the DSM criteria for social anxiety disorder. The findings of this interdisciplinary paper are consistent with the DSM-V criteria in the proposed revision for social anxiety disorder.