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Psychological disorder is
not a shame anymore, as some people believe. Life complications made
dealing with psychological diseases like other diseases. In this approach,
we will introduce one of the psychological diseases and its treatment.
We will introduce Social
Phobia in this edition, because many people suffer from it.
It is a psychological
disease that started to increase and spread in the last years. This is due
to many reasons such as rise in awareness among society, increment of
researches and studies on this disease and scientific development and
discovery of some new medications that have strong effect on similar cases.
It was thought that social
phobia was one of the rare diseases (1970). Then many researches implicated
that Social Phobia was not a rare disease but affects 2-3% of the society
(early seventies). After that, recent studies conducted last year showed
that the percentage of the Social Phobia might be three times as often as the
previous situation. (National Comorbidity, Surrey, 1997).
According to the recent
statistics, it is the third common psychological disease in Northern
America after depression, addiction and drinking alcohol.
What is Social Phobia?
Social Phobia occurs in
women twice as often as in men, although higher proportion of men visits
psychological clinics for this disease.
Social Phobia is a disease
that is comprised of many diseases a patient experiences while facing a
certain situation.
Social Phobia is two types:
First type: a feeling of
certain symptoms such as coldness of extremities palpitation, shortness of
breath, colic pain and rush to the toilet, red face, difficulty talking
when starting to eat or write or when delivering a speech lecture, play,
singing in public whether he knows them or not and this is called the
limited Social Phobia.
Second Type: Comprehensive
Social Phobia: it is a feeling of the previous symptom but in public places
such as concerts, celebrations airports and hospitals. It is not limited to
doing a certain activity such as eating, writing or delivering a speech.
Social Phobic patient knows that there is something unlikely and abnormal
going on. Therefore, he feels embarrassed and fearful to go out and face
any kind of sarcasm. He might escape or apologize not to attend parties,
deliver speeches, lectures. This might result in breakdown of relationships
or deterioration of the performance at work, which ends up in termination
and then depression.
Reasons of Social Phobia:
The main reason of this
disease is not known. However there are many theories to specify the reason
for that.
Gene factor: Abby Fyer
conducted many investigations on the affected families. These
investigations implicate that relatives of those families are three times
as often as people who have healthy relatives. In addition, Kagan made
studies on his group of children under 18 months and studies implicate that
(15%) of them feel shy and these children are more vulnerable to Social
Phobia.
Method of Education:
studies made on families and schools in the United States implicated that
Social Phobic children underwent a certain education method, which gave
them no confidence and kept them away from the communities and interfered
in their own personal relations that made them lose self-confidence.
Acquiring Social Phobia
through hard experiences. Some people are exposed to sarcasm, criticism
during parties and meetings that affect them in future.
Lack of some neurological
medications such as Norepinephren, Serotonen, Depamine.
Treatment:
Drug Therapy:
Studies proved that (60% to 70%) of patients don’t respond to drugs
especially the recent ones.
Behavioral Therapy that
helps patients deal properly with the said symptoms and to overcome them.
Analytical Cognitive
Therapy that is based on the occurrence of diseases and wrong ideas
resulted from them. This helps a patient find other techniques to think and
deal with the disease.
Drug Therapy: for instance,
studies proved that in several centers (Nardil) is one of the successful drugs in treating such
cases. Also, the (SSRI) group such as Faverin-Seroxib has a strong and
successful effect. As for Molcobmid, studies are contradictory, some agree
with them and others don’t. As for Inderal, it is used in minor cases not
as a medication but as a tranquilizer for the accompanying symptoms.
Behavioral Therapy: is one
of the treatment methods, which is based on psychological rehearsals that
give a strong push for a patient to deal with symptoms.
By
Dr. Jamal Al-Towairqi
Consultant, Psychiatry
Diseases
King Fahad National Guard
Hospital
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