A Pilot Study of Loving-Kindness Meditation for Social Anxiety Disorder

The purpose of this study is to develop and test a mindfulness and loving-kindness based intervention, Positive Affect Training (PAT), to enhance positive affect such as compassion, love, and gratitude and reduce symptoms of social anxiety disorder (SAD). PAT involves a combination of practicing mindfulness meditation and loving kindness meditation in groups. Although PAT has been shown to be effective for dysthymic disorder, one area that remains unclear is whether the PAT protocol for SAD can address the social anxiety symptoms in Japanese adults with SAD. The goal of the research is to test the initial feasibility and efficacy in increasing positive affect and decreasing negative affect in individuals recruited from the general community who are social anxious. If PAT is also effective for Japanese SAD patients, it could be more cost-effective and noninvasive option to address social anxiety disorder.

Mindfulness based stress reduction (MBSR) and mindfulness based cognitive therapy (MBCT), which are based on Buddhist tradition, has been shown to be effective for many psychological disorders including anxiety disorders. Buddhist tradition, however, has many kinds of meditation which would be able to address psychological distress but MBSR and MBCT has not focused. Loving kindness meditation (LKM) is one of promising meditation to be effective for psychological disorders because it is designed to increase feelings of social connection and compassion for one's self and others, whose focus is different from mindfulness meditation. Since mindfulness meditation is designed to observe and accept current internal experiences as they are while maintaining a primary focus on the breath sensations, it would cultivate less compassion than LKM would. Because patients with SAD tend to be self-critical, cultivating compassion for self and others with LKM would be more effective to reduce symptoms of SAD than MBSR and MBCT. In support of the view that KM increases positive mood and a sense of connection and positivity towards others, previous studies with non-clinical samples, schizophrenia, dysthymia, and PTSD had decreased the mental illness. The intervention protocol that the investigators plan to use was developed by Dr. Kearney and Dr. Hofmann. The PAT protocol has been shown to generate positive, and attenuating negative affect in patients with PTSD and mood disorder. The investigators aim to test the initial efficacy of PAT in individuals with SAD. The investigators hypothesize the intervention would show significant improvement in subjects' self-reported ratings of negative and positive affect and the brain asymmetry. Dr. Hofmann, a prominent researcher and clinical psychologist who is the foremost expert in LKM will serve as a collaborator. Dr. Kaiya, a Japanese CBT therapist for anxiety disorders will serve as an outside consultant for the study.