As per the DSM-V, Social Anxiety Disorder is an everlasting trepidation of some or all social circumstances where one may feel extreme humiliation and their uneasiness or anxiousness is at odds to the genuine risk produced by the social circumstance in a way, dictated by the individual's cultural-norms.
Individuals with SAD regularly keep away from social circumstances, & when such situations can't be stayed away from, they feel extremely anxious & distressed. In spite of the fact that they are well-aware that their fears are irrational and absurd, individuals with SAD frequently feel helpless against their apprehensiveness. SAD can be extremely devastating to the lives of the individuals who experience the ill-effects of it. For instance, job-openings & opportunities may be turned down as it may involve the person to be socially active with strangers or refraining from eating out with the company of your peers because of the constant thought that the person's hands might start shaking while they eat or drink.
The symptoms might be severe to such an extent that they might interrupt one's everyday-life in a negative way & can meddle a lot with day-by-day schedules, work-performance, or one's social-life, making it hard to finish schooling, acing interviews & getting jobs. It also affects one's ability at establishing friendships & intimate connections. Individuals that have SAD are likewise more susceptible to the development of depression & alcohol-abuse.
Onset and Gender Differences
SocialAnxiety displays a generally early-onset in adolescence & even childhood when it comes to the generalized-type of SAD (Chavira and Stein 2005). A French study involving primary-care patients revealed the average-age of onset as 15.1yrs with a 90% probability of SAD developing in individuals earlier than the 25yrs of age. Thus, SAD is the second-most common anxiety-disorder manifesting by early-adulthood (Chavira et al. 2004).
This disorder usually transforms into a chronic-condition & seems to be rather prevalent in females than males. Although, women & men are equally-likely to seek treatments for SAD, but community-based studies show that women are somewhat more likely to have this condtion (Kessler et al., 2005). Prevalence rates appear to be stabile in youth and adulthood and symptoms persist even in old age (Cairney et al. 2007, Kessler et al. 2005)
Epidemiology
There are more than a million reported incidences of social-anxiety disorder in India every year and thus its prevalence is quite common. Lifetime prevalence rates of up to 12% have been reported (Kessler et al., 2005) compared with lifetime prevalence estimates for other anxiety disorders of 6% for generalized-anxiety disorder, 5% panic-disorder, 7% for post-traumatic stress condition (PTSD) and 2% for obsessive-compulsivedisorder (OCD). Twelve-month prevalence rates as high as 7% have been reported for SAD (Kessler et al., 2005). Prevalence rate of Social-Phobia in the India population is about 4.2% (Trivedi & Gupta, 2010).
