Am I Normal? Social Phobia on BBC Radio 4
Well, it doesn’t get much press, but last night social phobia hit the radio airwaves with a half hour programme discussing social anxiety disorder. The Radio 4 website described it as:
“Are those who are merely shy and retiring being made to believe they have a mental health condition or are we failing those whose acute anxiety in social situations blights their lives?
‘Social phobia’ was first identified as mental health condition in 1980. Now according to some estimates, up to 1 in 8 people in the US and the UK has this chronic and enduring mental health problem.
Some believe it’s the most under-recognised and under-treated mental health problem of the modern age - the cause of many people’s depression and alcohol addiction. If you cure the underlying social phobia, they say, the associated depression is much less likely to recur.
Others, however, feel that psychiatry itself has gone just a little bit mad – re-branding ordinary shyness as a mental illness.”
Now, for a start social anxiety disorder IS NOT shyness and I’m personally sick of the two being lumped together as one! When are people going to realise this? There is a huuugggeeeee difference betwen being shy and being a socially phobic person; most shy people will be able to go to a social situation albeit feeling anxious - but most socially anxious people will be cowering in the corner of their room at the mere thought of walking out the door let alone attending the social situation! Also, I strongly believe that medication is of no true help in overcoming social anxiety disorder. You can get drugs which can help control the feelings of anxiety, and you can get drugs which help control the depression which is often precipitated by the social anxiety but to my knowledge there is no drug which will fix social phobia.
So although it’s wonderful that a programme aired bringing social phobia into the mainstream audience I was a little disappointed with it’s overall content and conclusions.
You can visit the BBC Radio 4 website on the programme here
You can listen to the programme here
