The Website of Dr. Mark Goulston

Don’t confuse a pothead with a SAD kid

One of the artifacts of the digital/text messaging age is that young people are becoming more and more comfortable at texting each other, with all the abbreviated language they use, and more and more uncomfortable at face-to-face contact. It seems that all it takes is for one teen’s anxiety to show itself and it become contagious.

What’s a teen to do? Unfortunately, what many of them do is turn to alcohol and pot at alarmingly young ages as early as eleven or twelve. It doesn’t help that they have as role models parents who deal with their own social and even marital intimacy anxiety by drinking.

The problem with alcohol and pot is that they may relax you, but they don’t necessarily help you become more effective at mastering the skills necessary to overcome Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD). The more insidious problem is that once a teenager discovers how to feel more comfortable using alcohol or pot, their social development can become fixated at whatever age they began subbing in substances for social skills.

One issue that keeps this phenomenon alive is parents failing to recognize or realize just how painful social anxiety and shyness can be. Many people young and old even experience it as viscerally painful. Too often parents will prematurely reassure their children,which causes the child to feel not taken seriously and makes them vulnerable to turning to solutions such as alcohol and pot.

To see if your child may be a SAD teen in pothead’s clothing, take the following quiz:

Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale

Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS) is a questionnaire whose objective is to assess the range of social interaction and performance situations that individuals with social phobia may fear and/or avoid.
It is also a popular measurement tool used by researches to evaluate the efficiency of various social anxiety disorder treatments, including pharmacological trials.
A modified social anxiety scale exists for children and adolescents.

The questionnaire includes 24 items. Each item consists of a given situation, the rate of anxiety (0 to 3 = none, mild, moderate, severe) and the rate of avoidance (0 to 3 = never, occasionally, often, usually).

Situation

Fear

Avoidance

1. Telephoning in public

2. Participating in small groups

3. Eating in public places

4. Drinking with others in public places

5. Talking to people in authority

6. Acting, performing, or giving a talk in front of an audience

7. Going to a party

8. Working while being observed

9. Writing while being observed

10. Calling someone you don’t know very well

11. Talking with people you don’t know very well

12. Meeting strangers

13. Urinating in a public bathroom

14. Entering a room when others are already seated

15. Being the center of attention

16. Speaking up at a meeting

17. Taking a written test

18. Expressing appropriate disagreement or disapproval to people you don’t know very well

19. Looking at people you don’t know very well in the eyes

20. Giving a report to a group

21. Trying to pick up someone

22. Returning goods to a store where returns are normally accepted

23. Giving an average party

24. Resisting a high pressure sales person

Resources:
http://www.psychmeds.com/liebowitz.html

Reference: Liebowitz MR. Social Phobia. Mod Probl Pharmacopsychiatry 1987;22:141-173

Heath Ledger, Your Children and You

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 10th, 2008 at 2:48 pm and is filed under Usable Insights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Don’t confuse a pothead with a SAD kid”

  1. Teen Teens For Cash Nudist Teens Says:
    July 21st, 2008 at 5:30 am

    Teen Teens For Cash Nudist Teens…

    I can not agree with you in 100% regarding some thoughts, but you got good point of view…

  2. free DDL Says:
    August 13th, 2008 at 8:39 pm

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