As a part of Words of Wisdom series, School of Sciences, Jain (Deemed-to-be University) organized a guest lecture on “Social Phobia” for MSc Psychology students on 29 July 2017. The guest speaker was Ms. Rukmini Systla.
Beginning the session with introduction on Anxiety, the speaker explained how anxiety and fear affects social functioning and evolution. She stated that fear and anxiety serve as an evolutionary function and can become maladaptive.
Focusing on the aspects that differentiate phobia from fear and anxiety she said that, it is disproportionate and persistent in nature where in person acknowledges it is irrational but finds difficult to come out of it.
Explaining the cause of Social Phobia she specified that, it is not limited to a single stimulus but a feared event is likely to be a reason. She also discussed Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) which stems from the core concept of fear of negative evaluation and leads to avoiding the social situation, though it is often confused with an anxious avoidant personality disorder, SAD has varied etiology.
During the session, the speaker also briefed on the characteristics of SAD, clinical features, types, and classification of SAD and discussed a few case studies.
The informative session was very helpful to MSc psychology students to understand the various aspects of SAD.
