Family and high-risk studies of social anxiety disorder

Objective: To present data on the role of familial factors in the etiology of social anxiety disorder. Method: Findings presented from a family/high-risk study (the Yale Family Study) and a prospective community study of youth (the Munich Early Developmental Stages of Psychopathology (EDSP) Study). Results: The Yale Family Study demonstrated a substantial degree of familial aggregation of social anxiety disorder and specificity with respect to other anxiety subtypes among adult relatives. The Yale high-risk component and the EDSP Study confirm the association between parental and offspring social anxiety, but did not yield consistent evidence for an association between familial environmental factors and social anxiety. Conclusion: Future studies are needed to examine mechanisms for the specificity of social anxiety disorder aggregation, to identify vulnerability factors for its development and to pinpoint environmental conditions that may enhance or suppress expression of underlying vulnerability.