Social Anxiety Disorder Analysis

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5 (DSM-5) as a disorder in which a person suffers substantial distress and anxiety in social settings to the point of interference with everyday activities (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). The acquisition and development of SAD can be attributed to a variety of reasons; this paper will analyze the role that classical conditioning has in social anxiety disorder and how the analysis of classical conditioning will be used in the treatment of social phobia.

The debilitating anxiety that is said to be elicited in social anxiety disorder is due to the fear of being scrutinized by peers and the feelings of embarrassment (Stein, M., and Stein,

The therapist has a variety of techniques to reduce anxiety, but the best way to deal with a conditioned social anxiety disorder is to use a process called systematic desensitization. Systematic desensitization is when a therapist gradually exposes a client to fearful stimuli that work their way up a hierarchy of fear (Priyamvada, R., Kumari, S., Prakash, J., & Chaudhury, S. 2009). There is not one hierarchy of fear that works for all individuals suffering from social anxiety, so the hierarchy is defined by the client, because a certain individual may experience more anxiety is one social related situation than another individual would . Most systematic desensitization therapies start with a relaxation therapy to reduce the existing anxiety, then the climbing of the hierarchy begins. The hierarchy exposures are focused on the conditioned stimulus and not the unconditioned stimulus. The systematic desensitization of social anxiety focuses on the group of people or social settings, compared to focusing on the original negative social experiences. The therapist would start at a generally weak stimulus, such as sitting on a balcony overlooking a mall food court at 10 in the morning, when there is a few, but now an overwhelming amount of people present. The client does not move up the hierarchy until the client feels

Extinction is simply presenting the CS numerous times without the US being present. A therapist would then just be simply throwing patients in the deep end of a social setting numerous times and just watch the client react. Not only would the therapist be acting in an unfair and cruel manner to their clients, it would also be ineffective. Other phenomena like spontaneous recovery put road blocks in the possibility of using extinction for treating someone with social anxiety disorder. Spontaneous recovery is the random return of an association between an unconditioned and conditioned stimulus. This would mean that the client would have the feelings of anxiety in social situations diminished, but the anxiety would randomly reoccur during a future experience. This would put the client and their therapist back at square