[Social phobia with somatic symptoms including nausea and urgency of micturition]

The common symptoms of the social anxiety response include blushing, trembling, feelings of muscular tension of the face, and fear of eye contact. However, the ICD-10 mentions other less familiar symptoms such as nausea, urgency of micturition or defecation, gastrointestinal discomfort, and diarrhea as symptoms of social phobia. Since some of these somatic symptoms are classified as panic-like symptoms in the DSM-IV, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between social phobia and agoraphobia when these somatic symptoms appear in situations usually associated with agoraphobia. We investigated whether social phobic patients with familiar symptoms (classical group; N = 24) and those with unfamiliar symptoms such as nausea, urgency of micturition or defecation (N/U group; N = 13) could be distinguished on the basis of several selected demographic and psychological tests. Fear of negative evaluation (FNE), social avoidance and distress (SAD), brief social phobia scale (BSPS), and Rosenberg's self esteem score (Se) were compared among these two groups and 82 controls. We also investigated whether they have "fears of making other people feel uncomfortable" which is believed to be a characteristic symptom for what is known in Japanese as "taijin-kyofu-sho." Both groups had higher scores on FNE, SAD, fear and avoidance scores of BSPS, and lower scores on Se as compared with controls. However, neither group differed in demographic variables or results of psychological tests, except for higher scores on the performance score of BSPS and increased rate of "fears of making other people feel uncomfortable" in the classical group. It is suggested that social phobia patients had common social phobic symptomatology and psychopathology irrespective of their somatic symptoms.