Social Anxiety

"The role that the involvement of parents may play in the treatment outcome of their
children with anxiety disorders is still under debate. Some studies dealing with other
disorders have examined the role that the expressed emotion (EE) construct (parental
overinvolvement, criticism and hostility) may play in treatment outcome and relapse.
Given that some of these aspects have been associated with social anxiety for a long time,
it was hypothesized that EE may be associated with lower treatment outcome. The sample
was composed of 16 adolescents who benefited from a school-based, cognitive-behavioural
intervention aimed at overcoming social anxiety. Then, parents were classified with
high or low EE. The results revealed that the adolescents whose parents had low EE
showed a statistically significant reduction of their social anxiety scores at posttest, as
opposed to adolescents of parents with high expressed emotion. These findings suggest
that parental psychopathology (parents with high EE) should be taken into consideration
to prevent poor adolescent treatment outcome."

DEPRESSION, SOCIAL ANXIETY, AND ATTACHMENT AS PREDICTORS OF THE USE AND QUALITY OF CYBER COMMUNICATION. Stefan E. LaTulip Old Dominion University, 2013 Director: Dr. Barbara Winstead This study examined the influence of depression symptoms, social anxiety symptoms, and adult attachment style on the use and the perceptions o f the quality of cyber communications with close friends, romantic partners, and family members. One hundred thirty-five individuals completed an initial survey, with sixty five o f the original group completing a follow-up survey five weeks later. Results indicated that anxious attachment was associated with a greater reported usage o f social networking sites, whereas avoidant attachment predicted less instant message use over time. Depression symptoms and avoidant attachment were generally associated with perceptions o f higher negativity and lower positivity with some of the target groups, where as social anxiety symptoms were generally associated with percep...

This study assessed the feasibility of a randomized controlled trial to evaluate the Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS) community match programs at the national level. Following a standardized protocol, 71 intake families (parents and children ages 7-14 years) and 30 adult mentors were recruited over 12 months from two BBBS agencies. Families were randomly assigned to the BBBS program (n = 39) or a waiting list control (n = 32). Information on children's behavior and psychosocial outcomes was obtained from children and parents using face-to-face interviews and questionnaires administered after enrolling in the study (but prior to knowledge of assigned condition) and at 12 months follow-up. Tests of equivalence revealed nonsignificant group differences on most baseline outcomes. Twelve families dropped out prior to the post-test assessment. ANCOVA results revealed beneficial program effects for five outcomes (child self-reports): symptoms of emotional problems, symptoms of social anxiety (fear of negative peer evaluations and generalized social anxiety and distress), teacher social support, and social skills (self-control). The study demonstrated the feasibility of an RCT to evaluate the BBBS programs. However, the design may be Children and Youth Services Review

This paper describes a study to examine how a social situation can be simulated in a virtual environment, and how to provoke the same behavioral response as in a real life social situation. The aim is to create new Virtual Reality worlds for treating social phobia. Two cases were examined in a virtual environment to assess whether it was able to recreate social behavior of people. First, we examined if participants who enter a crowded room in the virtual environment prefer to take a seat in a chair that is close to them. ...

Everyone has anxiety from time to time, but chronic anxiety can interfere with your quality of life. While perhaps most recognized for behavioral changes, anxiety can also have serious consequences on your physical health. Read on to learn more about the major effects anxiety has on your body.

The aim of this study is to analyse the relationship between Internet addiction andsocial anxiety and social skills difficulties in a sample consisting of 446 Spanish adolescents between 12 and 16 years old.Our results show thatadolescents with high scores in problematic use of the Internetpresent higher scores in social anxiety and social skills difficulties. Furthermore, the intrapersonal addiction showed a positive significant association both with the degree of social anxiety and with lack of assertiveness. On the other hand, the interpersonal addiction did more with social anxiety. Data from this study can help to design and implement prevention programs for a healthy use of the Internet at school and inhome settings.

Attentional biases in the processing of threatening facial expressions in social anxiety are well documented. It is generally assumed that these attentional biases originate in an evaluative bias: socially threatening information would be evaluated more negatively by socially anxious individuals. However, three studies have failed to evidence a negative evaluative bias in the processing of emotional facial expression (EFE) in socially anxious individuals. These studies however suffer from several methodological limitations that the present study has attempted to overcome. Twenty-one out-patients diagnosed with generalized social phobia have been compared to 20 out-patients diagnosed with another anxiety disorder and with 39 normal controls matched for gender, age and level of education. They had to decode on seven emotion intensity scales a set of 40 EFE whose intensity and emotional nature were manipulated. Although sufficient statistical power was ensured, no differences among groups could be found in terms of decoding accuracy, attributed emotion intensity, or reported difficulty of the task. Based on these findings as well as on other evidences, we propose that, if they exist, evaluative biases in social anxiety should be implicit and automatic and that they might be determined by the relevance of the stimulus to the person's concern rather than by the stimulus valence. The implications of these findings for the interpersonal processes involved in social phobia are discussed. r

The goal of this study was to examine the linguistic correlates of social anxiety disorder (SAD). Twenty-four individuals with SAD (8 of them with a generalised subtype) and 21 non-anxious controls were asked to give speeches in front of an audience. The transcribed speeches were examined for the frequency of negations, I-statements, we-statements, negative emotion words, and positive emotion words. During their speech, individuals with either SAD subtype used positive emotion words more often than controls. No significant differences were observed in the other linguistic categories. These results are discussed in the context of evolutionary and cognitive perspectives of SAD.

This clinical outcome study compared four separate cognitive behavioral and one behavioral treatment for reducing social anxiety with a waiting list control. Subjects were adults who responded to advertisements for treatment. In the cognitive-behavioral conditions, subjects were trained to modify their disruptive cognitions and/or emit adaptive cognitions relevant to interpersonal behavior with the specific content and techniques determined by the particular cognitive therapy. In the behavioral condition, subjects modeled and rehearsed appropriate social interpersonal behaviors. Subjects were assessed pre and post-treatment on self-report measures of social anxiety, measures of general anxiety, clinical scales of anxiety, depression and hostility, and behavioral, and physiological concomitants of social anxiety. Subjects in all active treatment conditions showed improvement on the measures of social anxiety and the behavioral measure. However, only those in the cognitive treatment conditions, demonstrated treatment effects on general anxiety and the clinical scales. The results indicate the efficacy of both cognitive and behavioral approaches to the reduction of social anxiety. However, they fail to demonstrate clear distinctions between the various cognitive therapies.

Separation anxiety and social phobia are intertwined to a considerable degree, and high comorbidity rates have been reported. The present study used latent class analysis (LCA) to investigate if classes of children and adolescents withsimultaneously-high rates of separation anxiety and low rates of social anxiety symptoms, or vice versa, could be identified. Eight-to 18-year-olds from a large general population (n ¼ 1000) and referred sample (n ¼ 735) were assessed with the Multidimensional Anxiety Scale for Children (MASC). With LCA, a separate class of referred 8-11-year-old children with high separation anxiety scores, and simultaneously lower social anxiety scores was identified, next to a class of children with high scores on separation anxiety and social anxiety. In the other groups (referred 12-18-year-olds and children and adolescents from the general population), a class with individuals who specifically scored high on separation anxiety could not be revealed. The results indicated that separation anxiety represents a different construct than social anxiety in referred children (but not in referred adolescents or in the general population). It can be concluded that, in referred children, research regarding etiology and treatment outcome of anxiety symptoms should be aimed specifically at separation anxiety and social anxiety, instead of just investigating a broader anxiety dimension. r

Perfectionists have shown increased negative affect after failure compared to nonperfectionists. However, little is known about how perfectionists react to repeated failure. This study investigated the effects of two forms of perfectionism—self-oriented perfectionism and socially prescribed perfectionism—on 100 university students’ reactions to repeated failure (versus repeated success) examining three negative emotions: anxiety, depression, and anger. Results showed that socially prescribed perfectionism predicted increased anxiety, depression, and anger after initial failure and further increased anger after repeated failure. In contrast, self-oriented perfectionism predicted increased anxiety, but only after repeated failure. The findings suggest that both self-oriented and socially prescribed perfectionism are vulnerability factors predisposing individuals to react with increased negative affect after repeated failure.

This article presents a self-presentation approach to the study of social anxiety that proposes that social anxiety arises when people are motivated to make a preferred impression on real or imagined audiences but doubt they will do so, and thus perceive or imagine unsatisfactory evaluative reactions from subjectively important audiences. We presume that specific situational and dispositional antecedents of social anxiety operate by influencing people's motivation to impress others and their expectations of satisfactorily doing so. In contrast to drive models of anxiety but consistent with social learning theory, it is argued that the cognitive state of the individual mediates both affective arousal and behavior. The traditional inverted-U relation between anxiety and performance is reexamined in this light. Implications of the approach for counseling situations are considered, especially the recommendation that treatments be tailored to the specific type of selfpresentational problem encountered by clients,

We examined different cognitive phenomena in relation to social phobia among children (aged 7 to 11) and adolescents (aged 12-16) separately. Fifty socially phobic youths were compared to 30 normal control children on measures of social anxiety, social expectation as well as self-and observer-rated performance during two social tasks involving a same-aged peer. Additionally, a video-mediated recall procedure was conducted immediately following the two behavioral tasks to examine specific types of self-talk. Results indicated that socially phobic youths had lower expectations of their performance and rated their actual performance worse than controls during a social interaction task, but not a readaloud task. Self-ratings of decreased performance among socially phobic youths were corroborated by blind observers. Although differences in specific types of self-talk were found between the two groups, these findings were generally moderated by age. Furthermore, certain cognitive symptoms associated with the disorder were more commonly found among older socially phobic youths. The current findings highlight the importance of considering developmental factors in the presentation and treatment of social phobia in youths.

STUDY OBJECTIVES: This work assesses the prevalence and development of disturbing dreams among adolescents and the association of these dreams with anxiety. DESIGN: Sex differences in prevalence were analyzed with chi-square analyses. Changes over time were assessed with Wilcoxon tests and cross-tabulation tables. Associations with anxiety and DSM-III-R symptoms were assessed with ANOVA designs. SETTING: N/A PARTICIPANTS: A total of 610 boys and girls rated their recall of disturbing and normal dreams at both 13 and 16 years of age. Subgroups of subjects were evaluated for anxiety symptoms at age 13 and for DSM-III-R symptoms of separation anxiety (SA), overanxious disorder (OD) and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) at age 16. INTERVENTIONS: N/A MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS: The recall of disturbing dreams was more prevalent for girls than for boys at both ages, and increased over time for girls while it decreased for boys. The recall of normal dreams was also more prevalent for girls at both ages, but this difference could not fully account for the difference in recall of disturbing dreams. Normal dream recall increased from age 13 to 16 for both sexes. The frequent occurrence of disturbing dreams was associated with anxiety at age 13 and with GAD, SA and OD symptoms at age 16 for both sexes. Evidence of more numerous OD symptoms for girls with frequent disturbing dreams suggests that this form of anxiety may partially account for the observed sex difference in disturbing dream prevalence. CONCLUSIONS: The findings highlight a prevalence of disturbing dreams that is especially marked for adolescent girls. Unlike previous cross-sectional studies, which have found the same sex difference, this longitudinal design also calls attention to within-subjects changes in disturbing dream recall. The results also confirm that the frequent recall of disturbing dreams is associated with pathological symptoms of trait anxiety-apparently even as young as 13 years of age. Further study of disturbing dreams may contribute to understanding of associated pathophysiological factors which, too, vary by sex (e.g., PTSD, insomnia, depression).

The aim of this paper is to provide the prevalence rates of mild, moderate and severe symptoms of social anxiety in a sample of high school students and to analyze gender differences and associated impairment levels within these three levels of severity. Five hundred and twenty students were assessed with the Social Anxiety Spectrum Self-Report (SHY-SR), a questionnaire that explores social anxiety spectrum. By applying two cut-off scores determined on a separate sample by using ROC analysis, the large majority (73.3 %) of subjects were classified as low scorers, 9% as medium scorers and 17.7% as high scorers. Fears related to social situations were reported both by high and medium scorers. Functional impairment defined by avoidance and school difficulties was more common among high scorers, but it was also reported to a significant extent by medium scorers. Compared to low and medium scorers, high scorers showed a higher F/M ratio (about 4:1) and a more homogeneous symptomatologica...

Research on cognitive theories of social anxiety disorder (SAD) has identified individual processes that influence this condition (e.g., cognitive biases, repetitive negative thinking), but few studies have attempted to examine the interaction between these processes. For example, attentional biases and anticipatory processing are theoretically related and have been found to influence symptoms of SAD, but they rarely have been studied together (i.e., . Therefore, the goal of the current study was to examine the effect of anticipatory processing on attentional bias for internal (i.e., heart rate feedback) and external (i.e., emotional faces) threat information. A sample of 59 participants high (HSA) and low (LSA) in social anxiety symptoms engaged in a modified dot-probe task prior to (Time 1) and after (Time 2) an anticipatory processing or distraction task. HSAs who anticipated experienced an increase in attentional bias for internal information from Time 1 to Time 2, whereas HSAs in the distraction condition and LSAs in either condition experienced no changes. No changes in biases were found for HSAs for external biases, but LSAs who engaged in the distraction task became less avoidant of emotional faces from Time 1 to Time 2. This suggests that anticipatory processing results in an activation of attentional biases for physiological information as suggested by Clark and Wells (1995).

We investigated how Tanzanian primary school students' school experience varied according to school performance in subjects such as mathematics and Kiswahili) and several sociocultural factors like parental educational level, gender, age, religion, and home language. A representative sample was collected from urban and rural schools in Morogoro region. 545 students (254 boys and 291 girls) from Std 1II through VII responded to a questionnaire in Kiswahili. The findings showed that high achieving students experienced the classroom atmosphere more positively and felt less social anxiety than low achievers. Use of Kiswahili at home was related with positive school experience in the urban sample and related with less use of native tongue in the rural group. Educational level of the parents was not correlated with their childrens achievements. Unlike the lowly educated parents, more highly educated parents had placed their children in higher performing schools (according to the Primary School Leaving Examination). Children in the urban higher performing schools experienced school more positively than in the lower performing urban school.

The Approach–Avoidance Task (AAT) was employed to indirectly investigate avoidance reactions to stimuli of potential social threat. Forty-three highly socially anxious individuals (HSAs) and 43 non-anxious controls (NACs) reacted to pictures of emotional facial expressions (angry, neutral, or smiling) or to control pictures (puzzles) by pulling a joystick towards themselves (approach) versus pushing it away from themselves (avoidance). HSAs showed

Maladaptive patterns of social functioning have been widely noted as core features associated with the clinical syndrome of combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), including interpersonal violence, social anxiety and avoidance, marital/family discord, and occupational impairment. Unfortunately, clinical instruments for evaluating the complex domains of social functioning are lacking, and no measures have been developed specifically for combat-related PTSD. Therefore, the development of reliable and valid procedures for assessing the social functioning of this group is sorely needed. A number of strategies currently exist, including symptom severity, symptom chronicity, and monetary gain incentive; however, assessment of this population represents several unique challenges. Until measures of social functioning are developed and validated specifically for combat-related PTSD, comprehensive assessment should consist of a multimethod approach, including (a) self-report measures; (b) structured interviews and clinician ratings; (c) patient ratings (e.g., daily diaries); (d) behavioral performance assessments of social skill strengths and deficits; and (e) other behavioral assessments, including functional analysis, psychophysiological measurements, and objective indicators of functioning. The development of an endstate functioning index, anchored to a normal $ Portions of this work were presented at (B. C. Frueh).

Patients with social phobia report experiencing negative images of themselves performing poorly when in feared social situations. The present study investigates whether such negative self‐imagery (based on memory of past social situations) contaminates social interactions. High socially anxious volunteers participated in two conversations with another volunteer (conversational partner). During one conversation, the socially anxious volunteers held in mind a negative

The clinical characteristics of children with comorbid anxiety and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD were examined. A sample of children from a pediatric primary care practice was assessed for anxiety disorders and ADHD. We defined four groups of children: (1) anxiety disorders only with no ADHD (n = 54); (2) ADHD-only with no anxiety disorder (n = 15); (3) neither ADHD nor an anxiety disorder (n = 107); and (4) comorbid ADHD and anxiety disorder (n = 14). Approximately 50% of children with ADHD had a comorbid anxiety disorder, and approximately 20% of children with an anxiety disorder had comorbid ADHD. The presence of comorbid ADHD and anxiety was associated with more attentional problems, school fears, and mood disorders and lower levels of social competence compared to children who had either ADHD-only or anxiety-only. Children with comorbid anxiety disorders and ADHD have more severe symptoms and are more impaired than children with either condition alone. Interventions need to be tailored to address the complexity of these comorbid conditions and their associated sequelae.

Video feedback has been shown to increase performance estimates on the part of speech anxious individuals (R. M. Rapee & K. Hayman, 1996). The present experiment tested a video feedback condition against 2 control conditions. A possible moderator of video feedback effects, the degree to which participants underrated their initial speech, was also tested, as was the possibility of mediation of video feedback's effects by increases in self-efficacy. Participants were 90 speech anxious undergraduate students. Although video feedback showed transitory effects across the sample as a whole, the effect was consistently positive for participants who highly underrated their first speech. Self-efficacy was an important predictor of change in self-perception of performance, but was not a mediator of video feedback's effects.

Research on worry during the past 15 years has revealed a remarkable amount of knowledge about this pervasive human phenomenon. Worry involves a predominance of verbal thought activity, functions as a type of cognitive avoidance, and inhibits emotional processing. Worry also produces not only anxious experience but depressive affect as well. Recent evidence suggests that the very private experience of worry is developmentally connected to enmeshed childhood relationships with the primary caregiver and is currently associated with significant interpersonal problems, especially those involving tendency to be overly nurturing to others. At the physiological level, worry is characterized peripherally by parasympathetic deficiency and autonomic rigidity and centrally by left-frontal activation.

Although neglected in diagnostic criteria lists, theoretical models, and treatment approaches, attenuated positive emotions and cognitions distinguish social anxiety and social anxiety disorder from other anxiety conditions (and cannot be accounted for by comorbidity with depression). We present a self-control resource depletion model to explain how the intense self-regulatory efforts of high socially anxious individuals dampen positive experiences and events. We review existing research on individuals with social anxiety difficulties, focusing on impoverished positive experiences and quality of life, atypical reactions to overtly positive social outcomes, the absence of a normative bias toward the positive in social situations, and a meaningful subset of individuals who show signs of impulsive, short-lived positive events. We also discuss findings from the social psychology literature for how to enhance positive experiences, positive events, and self-regulatory capacity in individuals with social anxiety difficulties. The aim of the review is to broaden theory, research, and treatment efforts to the positive spectrum of human functioning.

This study investigated the validity and reliability of the Turkish version of the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS). The sample of the study consisted of 590 university students, 121 English teachers and 136 emotionally disturbed individuals who sought treatment in various clinics and counseling centers. Factor loadings of the scale ranged from .39 to .88. Findings from discriminant validity showed that the DASS discriminates the normal and clinical population. Concurrent validity coefficients were found to be high (.87 and .84, respectively). Cronbach • internal consistency of the entire scale was .89. Item-total correlations ranged from .51 to .75. Testretest and split-half reliability coefficient scores were .99 and .96 respectively. These results demonstrate that the DASS is a valid and reliable instrument.

Social anxiety disorder (SaD) or social phobia is a co-morbid affective disorder in schizophrenia, present in up to one in three individuals. We employ 'social rank' theory to predict that one pathway to social anxiety in schizophrenia is triggered by the anticipation of a catastrophic loss of social status that the stigma of schizophrenia can entail. A group of 79 people with a first episode of psychosis were assessed for social anxiety: hypotheses were tested comparing 23 socially anxious and 56 non-anxious patients on measures of cognitive appraisals of shame/stigma of psychosis and perceived social status, controlling for depression, psychotic symptoms and general psychopathology. Participants with social anxiety experienced greater shame attached to their diagnosis and felt that the diagnosis placed them apart from others, i.e., socially marginalised them and incurred low social status. We propose a stigma model of social anxiety that makes testable predictions about how the shame beliefs may contaminate social interaction and thereby exacerbate and maintain social phobia. r

Breathing and politics are not usually considered relevant to one another. Is it therefore possible to engage with breathing as a force of social justice? What kinds of atmospheres can corpomaterial dynamics of breathing help envision for the possibility for individuals and social groups to live breathable lives?

It is my aspiration here to argue that politics can take place not only in terms of governance, social movements, identity politics, and biopolitics but also in terms of quotidian bodily actions—such as breathing. By working with breath as a force that is common to all living and breathing (in this chapter, human) beings yet differential in its enactments, I propose a rethinking of politics in which corpomaterial actions matter—politics not based on universalizing, homogenizing, or essentializing understandings of embodiment or subjectivity but conceptualized and enacted intersectionally in their specific situatedness and dispersal in the individual and structural dynamics of power relations. This chapter of the volume, therefore, explores the possibility of such politics in relation to the quotidian practices of breathing.

Students who are afraid of being judged negatively are experience of an anxiety which is called physical appearance anxiety. Social relations refer the relationship between two or more individuals through communication. Students have higher to encounter physical appearance anxiety towards social relations. This study was conducted in senior high school, in Mandaue City, Cebu Philippines. This research design used a descriptive-correlation to assess and to know the students physical appearance anxiety towards social relations using the rating scale researcher made questionnaire among grade 11 and 12 Senior High School student. Moreover, the quantitative data were analyzed through a weighted mean and processed by using a chi-square. It reveals that when a student experience physical appearance anxiety can affects in their social relations. There is a significant association between physical appearance anxiety regards with social relations. This implies that physical appearance anxiety...

In this study, we looked at whether social anxiety is socialized, or influenced by peers' social anxiety, more in some peer crowds than others. Adolescents in crowds with eye-catching appearances such as Goths and Punks (here termed Radical), were compared with three comparison groups. Using data from 796 adolescents (353 girls and 443 boys; M age =13.36) at three timepoints, the results show that adolescents affiliating with the Radical crowd tended to select peers from the same crowd group. Being a member of a crowd in itself did not predict socialization of social anxiety, but adolescents in the Radical crowd were more influenced by their peers' social anxiety than adolescents who did not affiliate with the Radical crowd group. The results suggest that through a bidirectional process, adolescents affiliating with Radical crowds may narrow their peer relationship ties in time, and in turn socialize each other's social anxiety.

When two people view the same event and later try to remember it together, what one person says affects what the other person reports. A model is presented which predicts that this memory conformity effect will be moderated, in different ways, by two components of social anxiety. People with higher fear of negative evaluation should be more influenced by their peers than others, but those with higher social anxiety related to avoiding social situations may be less influenced by their peers than others. Pairs of adolescent-aged participants took part in a face recognition study. For each trial one person responded and then the next person responded. The effect of what the first person said on the second person's response was measured; the size of the effect was moderated by the social anxiety measures as predicted by the model. This is the first study showing the relationship between social anxiety and memory suggestibility.

This paper reviews the current status of research on the phenomenology, etiology, maintenance, assessment, and treatment of childhood and adolescent social anxiety disorder (SAD). Despite being one of the most prevalent disorders of childhood and adolescence, SAD paradoxically stands as one of the least recognized, researched, and treated pediatric disorders. The small treatment outcome literature provides preliminary support to the

This paper presents a study about the use of virtual reality techniques Social Anxiety Disorder therapy. The final idea of this technique is to treat social phobic people only by short time exposition in a dedicated stress environment parameterized in real-time. The technique is applied to the problematic of speaking in public with a symbolic representation of an audience. Nevertheless, the same methodology can be used to treat different phobias.

The early contributions of childhood trauma (emotional, physical, sexual, and general) have been hypothesized to play a significant role in the development of anxiety disorders, such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and social anxiety disorder (SAD). The aim of this study was to assess childhood trauma differences between PTSD and SAD patients and healthy controls, as measured by the Early Trauma Inventory. We examined individuals (N = 109) with SAD with moderate/severe early developmental trauma (EDT) (n = 32), individuals with SAD with low/no EDT (n = 29), individuals with PTSD with EDT (n = 17), and healthy controls (n = 31). The mean age was 34 years (SD = 11). Subjects were screened with the Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI), Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS), Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS), and Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ). Analysis of variance was performed to assess group differences. Correlations were calculated between childh...

The development, reliability, and validity of a new instrument, the Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory for Children (SPAI-C), is described. The results indicate that the SPAI-C has high test-retest reliability and internal consistency. In addition, an assessment of concurrent and external validity indicates statistically significant correlations with commonly used self-report measures of general anxiety and fears and parental reports of children's anxiety and social competence. The results of a factor analysis indicate that the scale consists of three factors: Assertiveness/ General Conversation, Traditional Social Encounters, and Public Performance. Finally, scores on the SPAI-C successfully differentiate socially anxious and non-socially-anxious children. The instrument appears to be a reliable and valid measure for childhood social anxiety and fear and may prove useful for improving clinical assessment and documenting treatment outcome.

AIM: Social phobia (SP) represents one of the most frequent psychiatric
disorders. The results of a systematic review of the literature published between
1987 and 2008 on the prevalence of SP in general population are reported.
METHODS: A literature search of epidemiologic studies of SP was conducted on
PubMed and Medline electronic archives and by canvassing English-language and
other European languages publications. Eligible publications were restricted to
community surveys on adult population (age 16 to 65), using DSM and ICD criteria
and analysing lifetime, 12 months and 1 month prevalence rates of SP.
RESULTS: Of the general population studies, 45 prevalence studies met the
criteria of eligibility. The prevalence rates ranged 0.53%-45.6% (lifetime
prevalence); 1.0%-9.10% (12 months prevalence) and 0.96%-7.90% (one month
prevalence). In those community samples SP appears to be from 1.1 to 2.6 times
more frequent in females than in males.
DISCUSSION: Our review suggests that SP is a very common disorder worldwide.
Epidemiologic data on SP seem to be controversial, especially when considering
the prevalence rates. The large variations in prevalence figures are mostly due
to methodological differences, whereas an actual lower rate of SP seems to exist
in the far East areas. Among the Western countries the rates of SP seem to be
similar. A possible explanation to the finding of such a variability in the
estimated SP prevalence rates across different countries could involve the
transcultural differences regarding each population's expectations about
appropriate social and sexual roles.

PMID: 20066793 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

This study explored the relationship between memories for childhood teasing and anxiety and depression in adulthood. A Teasing Questionnaire (TQ) was developed that measured the degree to which people recall having been teased about 20 different topics during childhood. The TQ was completed by a sample of 514 undergraduates who also completed established measures of anxiety and depression. A one-factor model best accounted for the variance in TQ scores, and the total score was shown to have strong internal consistency. Scores on the TQ were signi®cantly and positively related to scores on measures of current depression, trait anxiety, social anxiety, and anxiety sensitivity. Tests of dependent correlations showed that remembering having been teased during childhood was not differentially related to depression and trait anxiety in adulthood. However, differential relationships between reports of teasing and speci®c forms of anxiety were shown. Limitations of the study were discussed, as were suggestions for future research in the more general arena of childhood peer relations and adult psychopathology. #