ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the diagnostic criteria of social anxiety disorder (SAD), treatment-relevant facts about the psychopathology and etiology of the disorder, and the treatment outcome literature. Social anxiety has been noted and recorded throughout history. SAD is associated with much greater distress and interference than shyness. During childhood, SAD is often associated with overanxious disorder, mutism, school refusal, separation anxiety, behavioral inhibition, and shyness. Some researchers quantified the number and type of feared social situations based on items reported in social anxiety questionnaires and other self-report instruments. Contemporary theories of social anxiety and SAD emphasize the role of cognitive processes for the maintenance of the disorder, with the notion that effective psychological treatment changes a person’s representation of the self in a more positive direction. The cognitive model also explicitly assumes the existence of a memory bias because it assumes that individuals with SAD show a memory bias toward socially threatening information.
