Social phobia is a common, highly comorbid, poorly understood and relatively understudied condition. The origins of social phobia share familial and biological features common with those of other anxiety disorders, but seldom have precursors of the fear of social communication been examined as a possible pathway to social phobia. Here we examine the role of early childhood language impairment a...

BACKGROUND This article examines the associations between DSM-IV social phobia and parental psychopathology, parenting style, and characteristics of family functioning in a representative community sample of adolescents. METHODS Findings are based on baseline and first follow-up data of 1047 adolescents aged 14 to 17 years at baseline (response rate, 74.3%), and independent diagnostic intervi...

The Social Phobia Scale (SPS), the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (SIAS) and the Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory (SPAI) were compared to each other and evaluated in patients with social phobia. We examined the relationship of these three contemporary social phobia verbal report instruments with each other, as well as with behavioral and self-report cognitive criteria. As expected, the thr...

Introduction. Social phobia is the most prevalent and chronic type of anxiety disorder worldwide and it affects occupational, educational, and social affairs of the individual. Social phobia is also known for its association with depression and substance use disorder. Objective. The aim of this study was to assess the prevalence and associated factors of social phobia among high school students...

This paper gives an overview on the epidemiology of social phobia. About 4.5% of the adult general populations suffer from social phobia, i.e. it is the most frequent of all anxiety disorders. Social phobia is clearly more frequent among women than among men. About the half of all individuals with social phobia suffer from any comorbid mental disorders. Reviews show a large variability between ...

Social phobia and depression are common and highly comorbid disorders in adolescence. There is a lack of studies on possible psychosocial shared risk factors for these disorders. The current study examined if low social support is a shared risk factor for both disorders among adolescent girls and boys. This study is a part of the Adolescent Mental Health Cohort Study's two-year follow-up. We st...

OBJECTIVE Social phobia is a common mental disorder associated with significant impairment. Current research and treatment models of social phobia rely on categorical diagnostic conceptualizations lacking empirical support. This study aims to further research exploring whether social phobia is best conceptualized as a dimension or a discrete categorical disorder. METHODS This study used three...

The present study aimed to analyze validity of a new proposal of delimitation and operationalization of the social phobia subtypes in the adolescence. The sample consisted of 971 Spanish adolescents ranged between 14 and 18 years, attending 59 high schools in rural and urban areas of the south-east of Spain. Principal component and cluster analyses were conducted. Results indicated that the pri...

OBJECTIVE The authors examined the extent to which two major personality dimensions (extraversion and neuroticism) index the genetic and environmental risk for three phobias (social phobia, agoraphobia, and animal phobia) in twins ascertained from a large, population-based registry. METHOD Lifetime phobias and personality traits were assessed through diagnostic interview and self-report quest...