title: Phobic nature of social difficulty in facially disfigured people.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Over 390,000 people in the UK are disfigured. Facial disfigurement distresses sufferers markedly but has been studied little.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To compare fearful avoidance of people with a facial disfigurement with that of a group of patients with phobia.
  
  
  METHODS
  Comparison of Fear Questionnaire agoraphobia, social phobia and anxiety depression sub-scale scores of 112 facially disfigured people (who scored high on Fear Questionnaire problem severity in three survey studies) with those of 66 out-patients with agoraphobia and 68 out-patients with social phobia.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Facially disfigured people and patients with social phobia had similar Fear Questionnaire scores. In contrast, facially disfigured people scored lower on the agoraphobia sub-score but higher on the social phobia sub-score than did patients with agoraphobia.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Facially disfigured people with psychological difficulties resembled people with social phobia on Fear Questionnaire social phobia, agoraphobia and anxiety/depression sub-scores but were less agoraphobic and more socially phobic than were people with agoraphobia. Facially disfigured people thus appeared to be socially phobic and to deserve the cognitive--behavioural therapy that is effective for such phobias.
authors.affiliation: School of Healthcare Studies, University of Leeds.
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Newell
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Marks
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000379:Agoraphobia / Q000523:psychology*; D006233:Persons with Disabilities / Q000523:psychology*; D019066:Facies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011581:Psychological Tests; D012934:Social Isolation / Q000523:psychology