Personality traits in social phobia, I: Comparisons with healthy controls.

BACKGROUND

Patients with social phobia often describe a general interpersonal sensitivity and meet criteria for DSM-III-R avoidant personality disorder. This study addresses the question of whether patients with social phobia have characteristic abnormal personality traits.

METHOD: A questionnaire with 140 items for self-rating personality traits was constructed for the study. Ratings obtained from 63 patients with social phobia were compared with ratings from 58 healthy controls. Structured interviews were also conducted with the patients to establish whether their disorders met the criteria for the DSM-III-R avoidant and/or dependent personality disorders.

RESULTS

Ninety-one items on the questionnaire were rated significantly (p < .01) differently by the patients and the controls. These items were divided into two item-groups, one relating to avoidant social behavior (subdivided by factor analysis into six factors) and another relating to more general depressive-anxious traits (five factors). The total scores had a normal distribution among the patients. With the 95th percentile of the controls as the cutoff point, only 22% of the patients had a total score within normal limits on avoidant social behavior. Avoidant personality disorder was diagnosed in 60% of the patients.

CONCLUSION

The results support the hypothesis that patients with social phobia generally have characteristic abnormal personality traits, but lend no support to a division of the symptoms and traits into two separate diagnoses.