Social Phobia among university students

Abstract

Social phobia is an anxiety disturbance known by its huge fear of situations related with social exposure or social contact. One of the most frequent manifestations of the social phobia (SP) is the fright of public speech, quite common in university group of people. The object of this study was to evaluate the response of university students, which have mentioned fear of public speech at academic conferences. Three students from both genders have participated of this study and had been evaluated by a semi-focused interview and by a negative evaluation fear scale. Participants referred physic (Tachycardia, facial blush, shaking, perspiration), behavior (avoid, freezing and flight) and cognitive symptoms (negative evaluation, humiliation) compatible to the diagnosis of SP during academic presentations. Scale plotting was similar to interview results. The profile of the data from this study corroborates literature findings.