The effect of narrative therapy based group counselling enriched with expressive art therapy on adolescents' social anxiety levels

This research involves the development, implementation and testing of the effectiveness of a group psychological counseling program based on narrative therapy enriched with expressive art therapy, in order to help reduce the social anxiety levels of adolescents who do not have a clinical diagnosis but show symptoms of social anxiety. The general purpose of the research is to examine the effect of this program on the social anxiety levels of adolescents. In the first stage of the research, a pilot application was conducted to identify the deficiencies and shortcomings of the developed program. In the pilot study, an experimental model was used by making use of quantitative research methods and conducting a pre-test and post-test between the experimental and control groups. Pilot application results showed that there was a significant difference between the experimental and control groups, favoring the experimental one. After the pilot application, some arrangements were made and experimental application was started. In the experimental application, mixed methods research was used, in which quantitative and qualitative research methods were used together. A research was conducted with pre-test, post-test and follow-up measurements with adolescents assigned to experimental, control and placebo groups with unbiased assignment. 16 adolescents in the experimental group were given group psychological counseling, which was conducted face to face once a week, each lasting approximately 90 minutes, for a total of 8 weeks. No application was applied to the 16 adolescents in the control group. 16 adolescents in the placebo group were given an application titled Academic Motivation, which was carried out once a week and lasted approximately 90 minutes each, for a total of 8 weeks. In the study, the Social Anxiety Scale for Adolescents (SAS-A) was used as a quantitative data collection tool. The results were obtained through pre-test, post-test and follow-up measurements after four months. For qualitative data, the session evaluation form and general evaluation form addressed to the adolescents in the experimental and placebo groups, the worksheets used by the adolescents in the experimental group during the sessions, and the resulting products were used to analyze their responses. As a result of the research, it was seen that the application applied to the experimental group had a significant effect on reducing the social anxiety levels of adolescents when compared to the placebo group, where the program titled academic motivation was applied, and the control group, where no application was applied. In addition, it was determined that the application had a significant effect on adolescents' fear of negative evaluation, social avoidance and uneasiness in general situations, and social avoidance and uneasiness in new situations. Adolescents' evaluations of the sessions also confirmed the positive effects of the application on them. The results are discussed in the light of the existing literature and some suggestions are presented for future research and for field experts. Keywords: Narrative Therapy, Expressive Art Therapy, Adolescence, Social Anxiety, Group Psychological Counseling.