senior project

[fracture]

I suppose it's now time to actually start thinking about it seriously. I'm pretty sure I have a problem for it.

“Should Social Anxiety Disorder be considered a 'real' mental disorder, or is it just a case of shyness?”I haven't talked to my teacher yet, since she's been helping the people who have no idea what they want to do. But I think I can

Comments

[ghift]

'Social Anxiety Disorder' is one of the things I was diagnosed with when I was going to hospital. It is a disorder. Shyness is uncomfortable, SAD can make you feel so fucking crippled you feel that, even with normal rationing in your head 'Why am I scared of going out, or doing this? Nothing bad is going to happen. Nobody is going to notice or care about me if I go outside', even though you can think like that, it does very little. I've stood and stared at my door several times because I can't go in the kitchen with someone else in there.

I imagine this has different stretches for different people, but mine...degraded pretty hardcore into hikikomoriism the last few months.

[degrees]

THIS. I don't think that being in a social situation, or even the thought of a social situation, should trigger my fight or flight reflex so dramatically. There's shyness, and then there's total incapacitation. And having people just chalk it up to simple shyness is just... idek, insulting, I guess. It's not like I -want- to be like this D:

[ryoup]

I think that's a really good topic. I read several articles on the same topic in a History of Psychiatry class a year ago. Now I feel stupid for chucking out the course texts (they were mostly about old terrible treatments for hysteric women and the rise of psychiatric pharmacology anyways). I also just remembered I never got my final paper back on cases of hikikomoriism outside of Japan. Drat.That being said, there's a lot you can touch on with that topic. How has it been officially viewed in the DSM over time? What's the (fuzzy) line between shyness and crippling disorder? Plus there's always the catch-22 of "diagnosis" and "label". People need a diagnosis in order to get the professional help they need but getting stuck with a label can be damaging so someone's social life and career. There's also the debate about drug companies medicalizing common shyness, grouping it in with the serious social anxieties to make more money which distracts from people with real problems

[josiana]

That's a pretty hurtful thing to say. :( But good luck on your project, hopefully it will correct some misconceptions people may have?