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Social phobia in the community: relationship between diagnostic threshold and prevalence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 April 2020

A. Pélissolo ,
C. André ,
F. Moutard-Martin ,
H.U. Wittchen  and
J.P. Lépine
A. Pélissolo
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, Hôpital Fernand-Widal, Assistance Publique, Hôpitaux de Paris, and Laboratoire Université Paris VII (JE 2152 UC 2236), 200 rue du faubourg Saint-Denis,75475Paris cedex 10, France
C. André
Affiliation:
Service Hospital-Universitaire, Hôpital Sainte-Anne, 1 rue Cabanis,75014Paris, France
F. Moutard-Martin
Affiliation:
Produits Roche, 57 boulevard du Parc,92521Neuilly-sur-Seine cedex, France
H.U. Wittchen
Affiliation:
Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, Clinical psychology and epidemiology, Kraepelinestrasse 2,80804Munich, Germany
J.P. Lépine
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, Hôpital Fernand-Widal, Assistance Publique, Hôpitaux de Paris, and Laboratoire Université Paris VII (JE 2152 UC 2236), 200 rue du faubourg Saint-Denis,75475Paris cedex 10, France
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Summary

This paper investigates the prevalence of symptoms and various diagnostic criteria of DSM-IV social phobia in a French national representative population of 12,873 subjects, aged 15 or more. Respondents filled out a mailed questionnaire based on the social phobia section of the Munich-Composite International Diagnostic Interview (M-CIDI) in the year 1996. Response rate was 80.5%.

Sixty-seven point one percent of the sample acknowledge having at least once in their lifetime a strong fear of one or more of the six prototypical social fear situations that are used as the CIDI social phobia stem items. However, only a few fulfilled all DSM-IV diagnostic criteria for social phobia. Depending on the type of diagnostic algorithms used and the stringency in which these criteria are applied, the resulting prevalence varied between 1.9 and 7.3%. These findings provide some further evidence about the considerable effects of varying diagnostic criteria and thresholds on prevalence rates for social phobia, explaining why most recent surveys have reported considerably higher rates of social phobia than those in the early 1980s.

Keywords

diagnosticepidemiologyimpairmentsocial anxietysocial phobiathreshold
Type
Original article
Information
European Psychiatry , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , 2000 , pp. 25 - 28
Copyright
Copyright © Éditions scientifiques et médicales Elsevier SAS 2000

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