Social Anxiety and Social Phobia in Youth: Characteristics, Assessment, and Psychological Treatment

The youngster who won’t talk to anyone. The child who avoids social and extracurricular activities. The teenager who has trouble performing before others.
Many children experience social anxiety in certain settings. Some, however, perhaps as many as 4%, experience a clinical condition of severe social and evaluative anxiety that profoundly affects many life situations. Christopher A. Kearney’s Social Anxiety and Social Phobia in Youth sorts out the many nuances of thought and behavior associated with this condition. In doing so, the author gives practitioners and researchers a thorough, up-to-date understanding of childhood social anxiety and social phobia with respect to their characteristics, assessment, and treatment.

- Introductory chapter covers related concepts such as shyness, introversion, and social withdrawal.
- Accessible coverage of epidemiology, biological, and environmental risk factors.
- Provides integrated etiological models and a proposed developmental pathway.
- Clarifies differences of normal childhood and adolescent concerns and their more pathological counterparts.
- Applied examples feature typical as well as unusual cases.
- Later chapters cover empirically-based assessment and treatment recommendations.
- Strategies for relapse prevention are provided.

Clinical and counseling psychologists, school and educational psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and pediatricians will appreciate Kearney’s clarity, organization, and depth of coverage. For principals, teachers, guidance counselors, and other school-based professionals, Social Anxiety and Social Phobia in Youth helps answer their question, "Why won’t this child participate?"