Effectiveness of Cognitive-Behavioral Group Therapy on Academic Worry Among Undergraduate College Students

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.201125.010How to use a DOI?

Keywords

academic worry, cognitive-behavioral therapy, group therapy

Abstract

Higher education has various stressors. Students who lack stress management skills can become very vulnerable to mental health issues, particularly academic anxiety. Academic worry, the cognitive process that generates negative possibilities that may occur in academic life, is an essential feature of academic anxiety with detrimental outcomes over time. Students tend to apply maladaptive coping strategies to academic worry, such as engaging in the worrying process or avoidance behavior, which causes them to become more entangled in their worries. Eventually, those maladaptive coping strategies lead to severe academic performance and an extended study period. Because worry is a cognitive process, a suitable approach to address this issue must also be based on a cognitive-behavior strategy. Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) was applied in a group setting because group dynamics help students become more aware and find insights regarding their situations. Four sessions of cognitive-behavioral group therapy were provided to four undergraduate college students. After the intervention, the participants’ worry levels decreased, and their beliefs about worry changed. Students’ beliefs about worry changed from maladaptive (“worry is dangerous,” “helpful,” and “uncontrollable”) to more adaptive. These findings demonstrate that CBT for worry was effective and advantageous in a group setting given its group dynamics and efficiency.

Copyright

© 2020, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Kadek Widya Gunawan
AU  - Adhityawarman Menaldi
PY  - 2020
DA  - 2020/11/27
TI  - Effectiveness of Cognitive-Behavioral Group Therapy on Academic Worry Among Undergraduate College Students
BT  - Joint proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Intervention and Applied Psychology (ICIAP 2019) and the 4th Universitas Indonesia Psychology Symposium for Undergraduate Research (UIPSUR 2019)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 116
EP  - 131
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.201125.010
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.201125.010
ID  - Gunawan2020
ER  -