I wrote an initial blog post yesterday on this month's new NICE guideline on "Social anxiety disorder: recognition, assessment and treatment".  In today's post I would like to focus more on the guideline's very interesting treatment recommendations. 

Fascinatingly this NICE guidance comes down fair & square on the side of one-to-one cognitive therapy as the first line treatment for social anxiety disorder.  So the authors write:

1.3.2 Offer adults with social anxiety disorder individual cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) that has been specifically developed to treat social anxiety disorder (based on the Clark and Wells model or the Heimberg model; see recommendations 1.3.13 and 1.3.14).

This month the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) published their new evidence-based clinical guideline on "Physical advice: brief advice for adults in primary care".  NICE state "The guidance is for ... anyone ... whose remit includes offering lifestyle advice. Examples include: exercise professionals, GPs, health trainers, health visitors, mental health professionals, midwives, pharmacists, practice nurses, physiotherapists.  It may also be of interest to others with a role in encouraging physical activity and members of the public." 

I wrote yesterday giving the official description of Arnoud Arntz's workshop in Belfast and explaining that getting an update on his work was the major reason I travelled to the BABCP Spring Conference & Workshops.  So how was it actually being there?  It was definitely worthwhile.  When I walked into the workshop, Arnoud greeted me saying something like "Why are you here, you already know all this stuff!"  Far from it.  Although I have done several days of training with Arnoud in the past, there is still lots for me to learn.  And it was very interesting to get an update on how his work has progressed. 

I read a lot of research. When I find an article of particular interest I download it to my bibliographic database -