One in 10 ‘Shy’ Kids May Have Social Phobia

Yahoo! :

Many kids go through a shy or “awkward” phase at some point in adolescence, but shyness can become more than a stint of social timidity. Twelve percent of youths who call themselves may actually be socially phobic, according to research from the National Institute of Mental Health. The research, published Monday, appears in the journal Pediatrics.

Some scholars, however, hesitate to classify social phobia as a mental disorder, suggesting that doing so could “medicalize” normal shyness and lead to overmedication of young people who in the past were merely considered introverted.

After surveying more than 10,000 kids between the ages of 13 and 18, as well as 6,000 of their parents, however, researchers have concluded that social phobia is in fact a debilitating psychological disorder that affects about one in 10 “shy” kids.

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