Coping Strategies for Stress in Patients with Social Phobia-Comparison of Generalized and Nongeneralized Social Phobia

Cho, Su Heon; Oh, Kang Seob

Abstract

OBJECTIVES
The purposes of this study were to understand the difference of coping strategies for stress and to compare the degree of social avoidance, subjective distress and fear of negative evaluation between patients with generalized and nongeneralized social phobia.
METHODS
Forty-six outpatients meeting the criteria of DSM-IV social phobia at the Department of Psychiatry Kangbuk Samsung Hospital were included. They were classified as generalized type (n=30) and nongeneralized type (n=16) according to the number of difficult situations. Social Phobia Scale (SPS), Social Avoidance and Distress Scale (SADS) and Brief-Fear of Negative Evaluation (BFNE) scales were administered to both groups. To evaluate the coping strategies for stress, we used 'Multidimensional Coping Scale'.
RESULTS
1) The group of generalized social phobia showed significantly lower scores on emotional expression and religious seeking and showed higher scores on passive withdrawal in multidimensional coping scales than the group of nongeneralized social phobia. 2) The group of generalized social phobia reported greater subjective fear of situation in which the patients were exposed to scrutiny by others than did the group of nongeneralized social phobia. The group of generalized social phobia tended to report severer anxiety and to avoid social situation that may be embarrassing far greater than did in group of nongeneralized social phobia. 3) In both groups, social avoidance and distress were positively correlated with passive withdrawal and emotional support and negatively correlated with active coping. Fear for negative evaluation was positively correlated with fatalism and negatively correlated with positive interpretation.
CONCLUSION
Efficient and active intervention to change unproductive coping strategy such as passive withdrawal is essential in the treatment of social phobia patients. Also this study suggests that interventions designed to modify behaviors and cognitions in emotional support seeking and fatalism could improve symptoms.