Social anxiety and disfigurement: the moderating effects of fear of negative evaluation and past experience.

Abstract

To examine the relevance of social anxiety and past experience to the social and psychological consequences of disfigurement. One hundred and forty-one patients on the psoriasis register at a dermatology clinic responded to a postal survey which was designed to examine the effects of psoriasis on quality of life as it was related to clinical severity, level of social anxiety and patients' previous experiences of acceptance or rejection. Psoriasis was most relevant for quality of life for those patients whose condition was visible on their face and hands and who reported a high fear of negative evaluation. Current quality of life, fear of negative evaluation and HAD anxiety scores were only tentatively related to the nature of previous experiences. Although direction of causality cannot be ascertained from these results, they suggest that interventions designed to reduce social anxiety could be used to help people who are having difficulty in adjusting to disfiguring medical conditions.