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Welcome everyone!
Your decision to actively and gently work
on overcoming social anxiety will change your life.
The therapy groups are active, structured cognitive-behavioral
groups. Everyone in the groups has social anxiety and is working to
overcome it.
Participating in the group is much easier than people expect.
There is never any rational reason to be anxious about the therapy group.
People fit in quickly and make acquaintances and friends easily.
Needed for admission: Progress on the
cognitive audio therapy sessions, motivation to overcome social anxiety, a
commitment to the group, and a willingness to cooperate in your own and everyone else's
progress.
1. A completely filled out application for the program.
The application may be found here
and must be completed fully and mailed back to SAI.
After receiving the completed application, we will e-mail
you concerning questions/problems and scheduling for individual
appointments that precede the group. A completed application for the
program must be submitted, received, and reviewed before we will contact you
about diagnostic and individual appointments.
2. A diagnostic appointment and two individual appointments with Dr. Richards
are needed.
These appointments are necessary for assessment purposes to insure you meet the
clinical definition of social anxiety disorder according to the DSM-IV, and to
fully understand what a cognitive-behavioral group for social anxiety
involves. (3 individual sessions before the group.)
During these individual sessions, we also talk about the
therapy, the group, and anything else you may have questions about.
During the group sessions, individual appointments with Dr.
Richards are scheduled, if needed.
Insurance may be used for individual and group appointments and a sliding fee
scale exists for accepted group members.
 3. The group uses the audio therapy series "Overcoming
Social Anxiety", which can be purchased online or at the office.
Each week we discuss and make practical use of each of the therapy methods explained on
the audio series.
Time Schedule for Saturday Groups
Note on fees:
We want to help everyone we
can.
To make it easier for people with social anxiety to participate
in therapy, you may use (a) the regular fee schedule or (b) the sliding fee
schedule, according to financial need. Depending upon your mental health
care insurance, you should be entitled to benefits.
If you use insurance, the
regular fee schedule must be used.
People with social anxiety disorder tend to get discouraged too
quickly. Please keep this in mind with regard to insurance or other
available options.
Please note: These groups are for people who
are functional, in the sense that they are currently working or going to
school/college. Being out of the house every day is crucial to using
the cognitive strategies we learn and practice in the group.
Dr. Richards will see people individually if they have a more
avoidant case of social anxiety (e.g., are not currently working or going to
school/college), to prepare them eventually for entrance into the CBT group.
The all-day session includes: cognitive review, questions, and
reinforcement. Behavioral activities are also included,
in which we gently move up your anxiety hierarchy, at your own pace.
You will be using the cognitive audio therapy series on a daily basis and
reviewing it in the Saturday group with Dr. Richards.
Returning People:
Once you have finished
your first group, and you wish to return to keep working on your behavioral
activities, we encourage you to keep attending until you feel you have overcome
social anxiety altogether. At present, the returning fee schedule is
low, and can still be paid by insurance or sliding fee.
Contract for the sessions:
To insure
that we maintain a motivated group of people throughout the length of the group,
we will ask you to sign a contract that you will participate in these sessions.
This is to remind you that we need a
GROUP of motivated people to keep running. Please also notice the
low fee schedule is a result of several generous donations.
Donors and Sponsors:
To introduce and
continue to keep this low therapeutic rate, we are dependent upon generous
donors and sponsors. At present, these people wish to remain anonymous,
but we want to thank them for their generosity in pushing therapy rates down.
We can only guarantee therapy fees will remain this low for the current
sessions.
International Groups:
Each year, we are happy to sponsor intensive therapy
groups for people, all around the world, who want to overcome social anxiety.
These usually occur in the spring and summer, and add a great deal to our
Saturday groups.
All information about social anxiety and our
programs is on the website.
If you would like an application for the program, go
here
You can email the program at
saturdaygroup at socialanxietyinstitute.org
Read
more about
the local social anxiety therapy group
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