Clinical Research Case Report

Abstract

Introduction: Social anxiety disorder is emerging as a significant mental health concern in India. It is an important cause for significant distress. Despite being a common entity, there is paucity of literature from India. In this review we intend to give an overview of studies that have been done in Indian settings on social anxiety disorder.

Methods: Search was done using search tools: PubMed, Embase, Medline, ScienceDirect and Cochrane library. Search terms used were”social anxiety disorder” or”social phobia”. To this search, term “India” was added to include articles on Indian population. Only those articles pertaining to social anxiety disorder/ social phobia published after the year 2000 and written in English were included. Articles on primarily other disorders, with just the mention of social anxiety in their text, were excluded.

Results: The initial search yielded a total of 2581 and 1692 articles with the respective terms. When the term “India” was added to the search field, the number of articles respectively reduced to 94 and 31 articles. After applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, a total of seven relevant studies were found in the past sixteen years including a case report and a correspondence. Rest of the studies were mainly on phenomenology and comorbidities of social anxiety or one prevalence study done in adolescents.

Conclusion: Most of the studies done in India were limited by small sample size, bias due self-administered questionnaire, non-standardization of questionnaires on the population being studied or heterogeneity of the groups involved. There were no studies available on management options, efficacy of the treatment, cost effectiveness of various approaches or on cultural aspects of the illness. We emphasize on the need for more research on social anxiety disorder in Indian settings, a common, yet often missed and significantly distressing clinical entity.