Social Anxiety - Disorder

Disorder

Extreme, persistent and disabling social anxiety may be diagnosed as social anxiety disorder. The experience is commonly described as having physiological components (e.g., sweating, blushing), cognitive/perceptual components (e.g., belief that one may be judged negatively or looking for signs of disapproval), and behavioral components (e.g. avoiding a situation).

The essence of social anxiety has been said to be an irrational or unreasonable expectation of negative evaluation by others. One theory is that social anxiety occurs when there is motivation to make a desired impression along with doubt about having the ability to do so. Although the "official" clinical name for the disorder, as listed in the DSM and ICD, is Social Phobia or Social Anxiety Disorder, support groups for people who have the disorder (whether through clinical diagnosis or self-diagnosis) often refer to it as simply "social anxiety" or even "SA".

Criteria in the DSM and ICD attempt to distinguish clinical versus nonclinical forms of social anxiety, including by intensity and levels of behavioral and psychosomatic disruption: The validity of the "disorder" diagnosis has been challenged, however, on scientific and political grounds; people satisfying DSM social phobia criteria may simply be temperamentally high in social anxiety rather than suffering from a disorder, although such problems in living in society may still deserve attention as a matter of social justice.

Standardized rating scales such as Social Phobia Inventory can be used for screening social anxiety disorder and measuring severity of social phobia.

Clinicians and researchers continue to struggle with definitional problems regarding the constructs of shyness, social anxiety, and social anxiety disorder. Each shares similarities, yet each has been used to define distinct aspects of psychological life as it relates to interpersonal functioning and how easy or difficult different cases of social anxiety are to overcome. A continuum describes some of the distinctions yet there is no absolute consensus yet as to where one disorder begins and another ends, although it is widely agreed that there are differences.

Social anxiety disorder may sometimes be symptomatic of an underlying medical disorder, such as hyperthyroidism.