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The Symptoms Of Social Anxiety Disorder

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About 12.1 percent of the general population has social anxiety (SAD) disorder during their lives (Kessler, Berglund, et al., 2005). SAD is the second most common form of anxiety disorder and affects 35 million people in the United States alone (Hofmann et al., 2009, Magee et al., 1996). People diagnosed with SAD have a lower quality of life, higher chance of substance abuse and greater risk of suicide (Baldwin and Buis 2004). The best and most common form of treatment for SAD is cognitive-behavioral therapy (Stangier, Schramm, Heidenreich, Berger, & Clark, 2011).[b1] Social anxiety disorder is defined as an “extreme, enduring, irrational fear and avoidance of social or performance situations.” [b1] Some of the symptoms of social anxiety disorder are fear that an individual will show anxiousness in social scenarios, an immense amount of fear that causes clinical impairment or social distress and symptoms have lasted for at least 6 months. [b2] Cognitive therapy is defined as a “group of treatment procedures aimed at identifying and modifying faulty thought processes, attitudes and attributions and problem behaviors.[b3] ” Clark and colleagues [b4] (2006) reviewed a cognitive therapy program that had real-world social scenarios included in the study. Their reasoning for doing this was to challenge patients’ negative self-concepts and thoughts in social scenarios. This style of program benefited 84% of individuals who participated[b5] . [b6] The three articles discussed in

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