In a recent article published in the Journal of Anxiety Disorders, Verdella and colleagues have focused attention on the relationship between social anxiety disorder and anger.
As known, patients with social anxiety disorder they seem to show difficulties in regulating emotions, in particular of the anger. In fact, patients with social phobia prefer strategies aimed at suppressing the expression of anger.
In general, the studies on the interaction between social anxiety and anger However, they gave interesting ideas, such as the presence of a subgroup of patients who manifest, in contrast with what was expected, anger in an open and direct way.
The study presented in this article tries to study and better clarify the relationship between social anxiety and anger; The authors expected to find several anger management profiles between patients with social anxiety, in particular in the degree of perception, manifestation and suppression and that these different profiles varied in the degrees of discomfort and social impairement.
136 patients relating to the Adult Anxiety Clinic of Temple University were recruited for the study. Participants were administered several tests of both general screening and for social phobia. To measure the expression of anger, the State-Trait Angers Expression Inventory 2 was used.
The results emerged 4 typical profiles in patients with social phobia: high anger – high suppression; moderate anger – low control; low anger – moderate control; Low anger – high control. Most of the participants (n = 68) was classified as low anger – moderate control.
Scrolling through the results, it is worth underline how the high anger group – high suppression has highlighted higher scores than the low anger classes as regards the fear of the negative judgment and has obtained the highest score ever as regards the fear of the consequences of the missing control of anger.
In addition, this class and the one with moderate anger – moderate control showed a higher score to tests on social phobia and social difficulties than the two groups with low anger.
In conclusion, the study, to present some limits (one above all the measurement of anger with a single staircase), seems interesting and brings attention to a significant aspect, but still still not very represented, in patients with social anxiety disorder.
It should therefore be underlined how anger evaluation can be a central and important factor to consider in the treatment of these patients.
Angers Profiles in Social Anxiety Disorder
Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 37, 21-29
Mark V. Versella, Marilyn L. Piccirillo, Carrie M. Potter, Thomas M. Olino, Richard G. Heimberg
