Social skills in agoraphobia and social phobia

Abstract

Anxiety disorders are commonly associated to social skills deficits. Social phobia is often related to this deficit, while agoraphobia is not considered. The purpose of this review is to investigate the literature on this association. An electronic search was conducted in the following databases: PsycINFO, MEDLINE and SCIELO, besides the references of some selected articles. Social skills deficit were more frequent in the studies that evaluated the performance of anxious individuals on unstructured tasks. Agoraphobia appears to be associated to an assertiveness deficit, although few studies were conducted.