Virtually encountering fears: Technology-assisted interventions for social anxiety disorder

The entry of technology into mental health care facilitates new treatment possibilities for social anxiety disorder (SAD). The main goal of the present thesis was to contribute to the knowledge on technology-assisted interventions for SAD by providing a systematic overview of the existing literature, investigating the efficacy of existing technology-assisted interventions, developing a virtual reality exposure intervention for patients with heterogeneous social fears, examining predictors of treatment outcome, and comparing different assessment tools regarding the prediction of social anxiety in daily life. By approaching technology-assisted interventions for SAD from different angles, this thesis provides new insights regarding the integration of technology and traditional interventions for SAD, such as exposure therapy, and presents conclusions and implications for future research