OBJECTIVE Evidence showing that infectious diseases in childhood play an important role in the etiopathogenesis of neurodevelopmental and other mental disorders is growing. The aim of this study was to explore the timing of common childhood diseases in early-onset anxiety disorders. MATERIALS AND METHODS We analyzed data from PsyCoLaus, a large Swiss Population Cohort Study (N = 3720). In thi...

Internet-based self-help for social phobia with minimal therapist support via email have shown efficacy in several controlled trials by independent research teams. The role and necessity of therapist guidance is, however, still largely unclear. The present study compared the benefits of a 10-week web-based unguided self-help treatment for social phobia with the same intervention complemented wi...

Thirty-nine individuals with generalized social phobia (social anxiety disorder) and 39 nonclinical controls performed a public speech after receiving cues about social standards. Using a novel video manipulation paradigm, one third of participants received cues indicating that standards for performance were high, one third received cues that standards were low, and the remaining third were giv...

Social phobia (or social anxiety disorder) consists of a marked and persistent fear of social or performance situations. Affected individuals fear that they will be evaluated negatively or that they will act in a humiliating or embarrassing way. Exposure to social or performance situations invariably leads to panic or marked anxiety, and such situations therefore tend to be avoided or endured w...

Two studies are reported which examined the content of beliefs about self-attributes in social phobia, and the level of certainty with which these beliefs are held. The results of both studies indicated that individuals with social phobia held less positive beliefs about their personality characteristics in comparison to non-anxious individuals. In addition, social anxiety was associated with r...

Background—Despite heightened awareness of the clinical significance of social phobia, information is still lacking about putative subtypes, functional impairment, and treatment-seeking. New epidemiologic data on these topics are presented from the National Comorbidity Survey Replication (NCS-R). Methods—The NCS-R is a nationally representative household survey fielded in 2001–2003. The WHO Com...