Social Anxiety Disorder

Social phobia is an intense fear of becoming embarrassed or humiliated in social situations.  It often runs in families and may be accompanied by depression.  Some situations that commonly make children with social phobia anxious are public speaking or performing, meeting new people, social gatherings, eating in public, using public restrooms, and speaking to authority figures. Children with social phobia often worry that they will do or say something that will lead to humiliation, or that their anxiety will be noticed by others who will then judge them negatively.  As a result, these children tend to either avoid the situations they fear or endure them with considerable distress. Social phobia is more severe than shyness, and may lead to impairment in several domains of functioning (e.g., school attendance and performance, social activities, initiating and maintaining peer relationships).  Key symptoms include:

• Intense fear of social situations
• Exposure to feared situations almost invariably provokes significant anxiety (e.g., crying, tantrums, freezing, shrinking)
• Excessive worry about embarrassment or being judged by others
• Avoidance of feared social situations
• Performance anxiety