Social phobia in the community: relationship between diagnostic threshold and prevalence

This paper investigates the prevalence of symptoms and various diagnostic c riteria of DSM-IV social phobia in a French national representative populat ion of 12,873 subjects, aged 15 or more. Respondents filled out a mailed qu estionnaire based on the social phobia section of the Munich-Composite Inte rnational Diagnostic Interview (M-CIDI) in the year 1996. Response rate was 80.5%, Sixty-seven point one percent of the sample acknowledge having at least onc e in their lifetime a strong fear of one or more of the six prototypical so cial fear situations that are used as the CIDI social phobia stem items. Ho wever, only a few fulfilled all DSM-IV diagnostic criteria for social phobi a. Depending on the type of diagnostic algorithms used and the stringency i n which these criteria are applied, the resulting prevalence varied between 1.9 and 7.3%. These findings provide some further evidence about the consi derable effects of varying diagnostic criteria and thresholds on prevalence rates for social phobia, explaining why most recent surveys have reported considerably higher rates of social phobia than those in the early 1980s. ( C) 2000 Editions scientifiques et medicales Elsevier SAS.