Broadening the research areas on social anxiety disorder

Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) is a highly prevalent mental disorder with far reaching negative consequences for overall functioning and wellbeing. Once coined the neglected anxiety disorder, research on social anxiety in the past decade has greatly increased, however many questions still remain. This chapter outlines progress towards answering some of these outstanding issues, presenting recent developments in social anxiety research. This includes an exploration of dispositional factors (i.e., evaluation fears and self-discrepancies) and cognitive biases (i.e., decision-making; attentional bias) to symptom maintenance and treatment outcomes in clinical and non-clinical populations. In addition, neural activity in socially anxious and non-anxious individuals during cognitive reappraisal is presented. Finally, we examined potential barriers influencing treatment-seeking behaviours in social anxiety.