Citation: Heeren A and McNally RJ (2016) A Call for Complexity in the Study of Social Anxiety Disorder. Commentary: The aetiology and maintenance of social anxiety disorder: A synthesis of complementary theoretical models and formulation of a new integrated model. Front. Psychol. 7:1963. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01963 A Call for Complexity in the Study of Social Anxiety Disorder. Commentary: The...

BACKGROUND Excessive fear of scrutiny is a defining feature of social anxiety disorder. Eye contact may trigger feelings of being scrutinized, and although eye contact is commonly feared in persons with social anxiety disorder, it has been studied little. The purpose of this study was to characterize fear and avoidance of eye contact in patients with social anxiety disorder and in nonpatient sa...

Social anxiety disorder is an invalidating psychiatric disorder characterized by extreme fear and avoidance of one or more social situations in which patients might experience scrutiny by others. The goal of this two-generation family study was to delineate behavioral and electrocortical endophenotypes of social anxiety disorder related to social evaluation. Nine families of patients with socia...

Our understanding of social anxiety disorder (also known as social phobia) has moved from rudimentary awareness that it is not merely shyness to a much more sophisticated appreciation of its prevalence, its chronic and pernicious nature, and its neurobiological underpinnings. Social anxiety disorder is the most common anxiety disorder; it has an early age of onset--by age 11 years in about 50% ...

Copyright © 2006 Massachusetts Medical Society. A 28-year-old man reports feeling anxious and self-conscious around people in school, work, and social situations since his early teens. He appears shy and, on questioning, describes avoidance of speaking up in work meetings, attending social gatherings, and dating. He desperately wants to be more socially active but fears he will appear nervous a...

Shyness and self-consciousness are related constructs describing a tendency for some people to fear and avoid the scrutiny of others. In some cases, these characteristics are so pronounced that the individual shuns most forms of interpersonal contact or endures these encounters only with intense discomfort. Such people suffer from what is alternately referred to as “social anxiety disorder” or ...

As defined in the DSM-IV-TR (1), social anxiety disorder (SAD), or social phobia, is now well recognized as a prevalent and significantly impairing disorder with an onset early in life. Since Liebowitz and colleagues’ commentary regarding the neglect of SAD in the contemporary literature (2), there has been considerable research into the nature of SAD, its natural history, its biological and en...