Prevalence and features of spontaneous recurrent images in social anxiety disorder: findings from a Korean community sample

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 172-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Da Eun Suh ◽  
Kyung-Ah Chang ◽  
Ji Un Hwang ◽  
Jung-Hye Kwon

AbstractBackground:Previous studies have indicated that people with social anxiety disorder (SAD) often experience spontaneous, recurrent images (SRI). It was assumed that Koreans with interdependent self-views may contain more features related to social contexts in their self-images than those reported in Western cultures.Aims:In the present study, we aimed to explore the prevalence and content of SRIs in individuals with SAD in Korea. Furthermore, we investigated the relationship between features of SRIs and variables of SAD.Method:Sixty-four individuals with SAD (27.00 ± 7.42 years, 64.1% female), diagnosed with SAD, completed self-report questionnaires related to social anxiety. Afterwards, a semi-structured interview was used to assess features and content of the individuals’ SRI.Results:Thirty (47%) of the participants reported experiencing SRIs in social situations. The content of the SRIs were classified under three themes: negative self-images, negative images of others, and abstract images. The distress level of SRIs was positively associated with social phobia scales (r = .385, p < .05) and physical anxiety symptoms (r = .478, p < .05). Frequency of SRIs was positively associated with avoidance scores (r = .402, p < .05).Conclusions:The results demonstrated differences in the prevalence and content of the SRIs between Western and non-Western cultures. Fewer individuals with SAD in Korea reported having SRIs, and the content of these SRIs involved people other than the self. Some features of SRIs were associated with variables of SAD.

2010 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raul Rivero ◽  
LuisJoaquin Garcia-Lopez ◽  
Stefan G. Hofmann

Contemporary theories of social anxiety emphasize the role of cognitive processes. Although social anxiety disorder is one of the most common mental health problems in adolescents, there are very few self-report instruments available to measure cognitive processes related to social anxiety in adolescents, let alone non-English instruments. The Self-Statements During Public Speaking Scale (SSPS; Hofmann & DiBartolo, 2000 ) is a brief self-report measure designed to assess self-statements related to public speaking, the most commonly feared social performance situation. In order to fill this gap in the literature, we translated the SSPS into Spanish and administered it to 1,694 adolescents from a community sample, a clinical sample composed of 71 subjects with a principal diagnosis of social anxiety disorder, and a clinical control group consisting of 154 patients. The scale showed good psychometric properties, supporting the use of the Spanish version of the SSPS in adolescents.


2021 ◽  
Vol 85 (2) ◽  
pp. 100-122
Author(s):  
Mirjana Subotic-Kerry ◽  
Andrew J. Baillie ◽  
Lexine A. Stapinski ◽  
Maree J. Abbott ◽  
Jo MacDonald ◽  
...  

Comorbid social anxiety and alcohol use disorders (SAD-AUD) in the community and the complex interactions that occur between these disorders have emerged as a significant clinical, public health, and research issue. The authors examined (a) the rates of comorbid SAD-AUD, (b) the impact of comorbid SAD-AUD on outcomes targeting social anxiety disorder, and (c) the effect of pretreatment alcohol consumption and alcohol use before, during, and after social situations on a composite measure of social anxiety in 172 adults presenting with social anxiety disorder. There was low incidence of AUD in this sample of individuals with SAD. Results indicated that alcohol consumption did not lead to worse social anxiety symptoms; however, alcohol use before and during social situations was associated with more severe social anxiety symptoms. These findings suggest that the function of alcohol use may be more important than the overall level of alcohol use and has implications for treatment.


2003 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 611-622 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. I. ZAIDER ◽  
R. G. HEIMBERG ◽  
D. M. FRESCO ◽  
F. R. SCHNEIER ◽  
M. R. LIEBOWITZ

Background. The clinical Global Impression Scale (CGI) is commonly used as a primary outcome measure in studies evaluating the efficacy of treatments for anxiety disorders. The current study evaluated the psychometric properties and predictors of clinicians' ratings on an adapted version of the CGI among individuals with social anxiety disorders.Method. An independent assessor administered the CGI Severity of Illness and Improvement ratings to 123 patients at baseline and the subset of treated patients again mid- and post-treatment.Results. Improvement ratings were strongly related to both concurrent Severity of Illness and changes in Severity of Illness ratings from baseline. Additionally, both CGI ratings were positively correlated with both self-report and clinician-administered measures of social anxiety, depression, impairment and quality of life. Measures of social anxiety symptoms accounted for a large portion of the variance in Severity of Illness ratings, with significant additional variance accounted for by measures of impairment and depression. Changes in social anxiety symptoms from baseline accounted for significant variance in Improvement ratings, but no significant additional variance was accounted for by changes in impairment and depressive symptoms.Conclusions. Our findings support the utility of the CGI as an index of global severity and symptom-specific improvement among individuals with social anxiety disorder.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Di Matteo ◽  
Wendy Wang ◽  
Kathryn Fotinos ◽  
Sachinthya Lokuge ◽  
Julia Yu ◽  
...  

BACKGROUND The ability to objectively measure the severity of depression and anxiety disorders in a passive manner could have a profound impact on the way in which these disorders are diagnosed, assessed, and treated. Existing studies have demonstrated links between both depression and anxiety and the linguistic properties of words that people use to communicate. Smartphones offer the ability to passively and continuously detect spoken words to monitor and analyze the linguistic properties of speech produced by the speaker and other sources of ambient speech in their environment. The linguistic properties of automatically detected and recognized speech may be used to build objective severity measures of depression and anxiety. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to determine if the linguistic properties of words passively detected from environmental audio recorded using a participant’s smartphone can be used to find correlates of symptom severity of social anxiety disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, depression, and general impairment. METHODS An Android app was designed to collect periodic audiorecordings of participants’ environments and to detect English words using automatic speech recognition. Participants were recruited into a 2-week observational study. The app was installed on the participants’ personal smartphones to record and analyze audio. The participants also completed self-report severity measures of social anxiety disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, depression, and functional impairment. Words detected from audiorecordings were categorized, and correlations were measured between words counts in each category and the 4 self-report measures to determine if any categories could serve as correlates of social anxiety disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, depression, or general impairment. RESULTS The participants were 112 adults who resided in Canada from a nonclinical population; 86 participants yielded sufficient data for analysis. Correlations between word counts in 67 word categories and each of the 4 self-report measures revealed a strong relationship between the usage rates of death-related words and depressive symptoms (<i>r</i>=0.41, <i>P</i>&lt;.001). There were also interesting correlations between rates of word usage in the categories of reward-related words with depression (<i>r</i>=–0.22, <i>P</i>=.04) and generalized anxiety (<i>r</i>=–0.29, <i>P</i>=.007), and vision-related words with social anxiety (<i>r</i>=0.31, <i>P</i>=.003). CONCLUSIONS In this study, words automatically recognized from environmental audio were shown to contain a number of potential associations with severity of depression and anxiety. This work suggests that sparsely sampled audio could provide relevant insight into individuals’ mental health. CLINICALTRIAL


Author(s):  
Brian A. Sharpless ◽  
Amy L. Balko ◽  
Jessica Lynn Grom

Anxiety in social situations presumably is found in every culture. However, there may be differences across cultures in the specific ways that this anxiety manifests itself and is subjectively experienced by the sufferer. Taijin kyofusho is a broad term for various socially directed fears. Manifestations range from classic social anxiety disorder symptoms to those found in body dysmporphic disorder, delusional disorder, and olfactory reference syndrome. Though originally thought to be a culturally bound variation of social anxiety found only in East Asian populations, a growing body of evidence also locates it in the West. In contrast to egocentric fears found in social anxiety disorder (e.g., “I will embarrass myself”), prototypical taijin kyofusho symptoms are more other directed (e.g., “I will offend others or make them uncomfortable”). Assessment and treatment options are summarized.


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