Social Anxiety and Phobia in Adolescents

This volume brings together research into diverse aspects of social anxiety and its clinical form, social phobia, in adolescents. Development of the condition, clinical manifestations, and evidence-based prevention and treatment strategies are all addressed, with emphasis on ways in which adolescent development and the broader family and peer context are reflected in the manifestation and treatment of symptoms.

The first part of the book reviews epidemiological, neurobiological, and sociopsychological research on vulnerability factors that aim to clarify why both social anxiety and phobia intensify in adolescence. The second part focuses on the phenomenology of social anxiety and phobia in different developmental contexts and provides the reader with a review of developmentally-appropriate evidence-based assessment methods. For example, this section includes chapters on social anxiety in the school environment and in romantic relationships, social phobia in the clinical setting, and severe forms of social phobia in late adolescence. The third section reviews the psychosocial prevention and treatment options for adolescent social anxiety as well as the psychopharmacological treatment of social phobia.

Social Anxiety and Phobia in Adolescents will be informative and interesting for all child and adolescent psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, and psychotherapists as well as for school psychologists and counsellors.