A Review on Social Anxiety Disorder, Effective Factors and Treatment

ABSTRACT Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is a type of anxiety disorders. It refers to a resistant fear in the individual. Fear of society, social interactions, and all situations in which both relational aspects and functional performances of the disordered person are involved. A person with social anxiety disorder does not lack social senses and a tendency to communicate with others, but the fear of possible humiliating situations, makes him to tend to social avoidance while he is aware of the fear and illogicality in his action. Many surveys are carried out in the field of treatment and reduction of SAD symptoms, especially in cognitive and metacognitive treatment. Cognitive treatment focuses on self-talk as one of the surveyed fields in SAD investigation. In fact, self-talk is a fruit of human cognitions that is revealed through talking or expressing one's own opinion about others, the world and individual's communications. Moreover, a study on the field revealed that cognitive treatment based on self-talk is useful in reducing social anxieties, and negative self-talks have a more important role than positive ones, thus, treatments should focus on elimination of negative thoughts more that establishing positive ones. Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is among the most prevalent mental disorders, and its prevalence rate is estimated to be 13%. Its obvious destructive role in social interactions of the individuals and their isolation and avoidance of positive and essential activities of life signifies the maladaptive nature of the disorder