III. How well does reducing social fears and incorporating social support help anxiety? What do studies show?

Course speech

Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.

Although studies have shown very negative effects when you are socially isolated [10, 16, 24], research on the whole, supports the physical and mental health benefits resulting from a broad network of social support, regardless of the make-up of the support: Studies have shown that:

Social support can improve the quality of life, overall wellbeing, and lower stress in people with heart conditions and chronic diseases [1, 9, 14, 27].
The physical and emotional responses reduce stress even more [23] when the social support came from a partner or spouse.
Social support has also been linked to having a healthier heart rate and decreased anxiety responses [15, 18, 25].
You can still benefit even when you do not have someone close to support you.
People who work with their support network for their health, wellbeing, and treatment activities show more improvement than people who only rely on themselves [8, 28].
Using group therapy for social support in the treatment of anxiety, shows a 20-40% improvement plus a reduction in long-term anxiety [29].
People who have a stronger network of support show greater health improvement even when working alone, than people who have little or no support [21].
Just being proactive in building a social support network already generates greater positivity [26].

The positive benefits of social support have been shown to affect people of different cultures:

Latin American, Asian, and African students have lower depression and anxiety with greater social support [22].
Having a wide variety of friends from different ethnic groups or social groups (work, school, sports, family) reduces stress and anxiety, because they have diverse backgrounds and can draw on the experiences from different stressful situations [8, 28].

Research has shown that social isolation can lead to unhealthy behaviours, chronic conditions, and poor health [18, 25]:

People who are isolated or have no social or emotional support run a higher risk of mortality, physical and mental distress, poor health, anxiety, poor sleep quality and occurrence of pain [10, 16, 24].
Social isolation can increase heart rate and negative moods or behaviour [18, 25].
A lack of social support can lead to higher rates of smoking and obesity and increased physical inactivity [19].

People who have social phobia may be at a higher risk for social isolation, and in turn poorer health [6]. Even when they have supportive friends, family, or loved ones, they may still think they have a lack of social support and can therefore prevent them from maintaining and having a strong network [3, 4, 5]. These research findings prove how much more important it is to treat social phobia first before building a social network [3]. Treatment for social phobia is widely available and is effective in different forms [3]. Research findings suggest that self-help for social phobia is as successful as a group or therapist treatment [20].

For friends and family members, a positive and optimistic outlook can help everyone cope better with anxiety treatment. Carers who are personally optimistic tend to be more effective when helping their friend or family suffering from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder [30]. Actively supporting people to cope with fighting this disorder provides the social support needed to help lower anxiety [26].