Data from the National Comorbidity Study revealed the lifetime prevalence of social phobia to be 13% and the 6-month prevalence to be 8%. These figures indicate that social phobia is the most common anxiety disorder and one of the most common emotional disorders in the general population (second only to sustance abuse). Social phobia has an early onset and appears to follow a chronic and unremitting course. Social phobics suffer severe emotional distress, social avoidance, increased use of alcohol and other drugs, increased suicidal ideation and attempts, incomplete educational attainment, and social, educational and occupational maladjustment (including lost productivity). A prominent gap in understanding the psychopathology of social phobia is whether the disorder is characterized by deficits in social skills. Extant data have provided mixed findings, but the weight of the clinical evidence is that social phobics are deficient in social skills but the exact skill deficits remain to be elucidated. Whether or not social phobics are deficient in social skill has implications for how psychosocial treatment is carried out. Conceptually, there are two studies proposed in this application. The first study is designed to determine if social phobics manifest social skills deficits, explicate the nature of the deficiencies, and determine if the generalized are more deficient than the non-generalized (specific subtype). A normal comparison group will be included in order to allow for a comparison of social skills in social phobics to those of normals. Also, including the normal group will allow for the generation of norms to which the social skills of social phobics in future studies can be compared. The second study is designed to determine if skill deficits in generalized social phobics can be improved, and whether improvements in social skills are associated with improvements in overall social functioning.
