Assessment of social anxiety in adolescents

Abstract

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is one of the most prevalent mental health disorders in adolescence and tends to be a chronic, stable condition that severely disrupts long-term functioning. Despite this, SAD is under-recognized and undertreated, in part due to it being underestimated by parents and teachers. Accurate detection and diagnosis are needed for adequate treatment. Assessment approaches that incorporate reports from multiple informants have the potential to measure important variations in youths’ symptom presentations, such as when they experience concerns in some social contexts not but others. Significant advancements involve developing clinical procedures that integrate measures of biological processes (e.g., assessments of cardiovascular and brain responses) with traditional clinical tools (e.g., youths’ responses on clinical interviews, questionnaires, and behavioral tasks). In addition, screening with short/brief measures would enhance one of the barriers to implementation of assessment protocols. School is also a place where young people can be easily reached for screening and implementing mental health promotion and protection programs. This chapter reviews clinical assessment procedures for SAD in adolescents, including multi-informant and context-sensitive clinical assessment, physiological assessment methods, and observational and role-play procedures. The chapter also provides suggestions for how to conduct a thorough and sensitive assessment.