Study Suggests Link Between Social Anxiety Disorder, Alcoholism Risk

A study that examined a number of anxiety disorders has found that social anxiety disorder was the only one linked with a higher risk of an individual later developing alcoholism. Published in the journal Depression and Anxiety, the study was based on interviews with 2,800 adult twins in Norway.

The researchers looked at the presence of social anxiety disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, agoraphobia and specific phobias. They found that social anxiety disorder had the strongest association with alcoholism, predicting alcoholism over and above the effect of other anxiety disorders.

Social anxiety disorder was the only one of the studied anxiety disorders to be linked with a higher risk of subsequent alcoholism, the researchers reported.

“Many individuals with social anxiety are not in treatment,” said lead researcher Fartein Ask Torvik of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. “This means that we have an underutilized potential, not only for reducing the burden of social anxiety, but also for preventing alcohol problems. Cognitive behavioral therapy with controlled exposure to the feared situations has shown good results.”