title: What Brings You Here? Exploring Why Young Adults Seek Help for Social Anxiety.
abstract: Social anxiety disorder typically manifests in young adulthood, but there is an absence of qualitative research on the actual experiences of young adults suffering with this disorder. The aim of the present study was to investigate the lived experiences of 29 Norwegian university students who were seeking professional help for symptoms of social anxiety. We conducted in-depth interviews prior to a clinical trial. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed using a team-based thematic analysis method based on a hermeneutic-phenomenological epistemology. We identified five themes: (a) from being shy to interpreting anxiety as a mental health problem, (b) experiencing emotions as threatening and uncontrollable, (c) encountering loneliness as relationships fall away, (d) hiding the vulnerable self from others, and (e) deciding to face social fears in the future. We relate our findings to existing theory and research, discuss our process of reflexivity, highlight study limitations, and suggest implications for future research.
authors.affiliation: University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway Aslak.Hjeltnes@uib.no.
authors.forename: Aslak
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Hjeltnes
authors.affiliation: District General Hospital of Førde, Førde, Norway.
authors.forename: Christian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Moltu
authors.affiliation: University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway.
authors.forename: Elisabeth
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Schanche
authors.affiliation: University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway.
authors.forename: Per-Einar
authors.initials: PE
authors.lastname: Binder
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001007:Anxiety; D004644:Emotions; D005239:Fear; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009664:Norway; D010342:Patient Acceptance of Health Care; D000072861:Phobia, Social / Q000628:therapy*; D036301:Qualitative Research; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Norwegian; emotions / emotion work; health care / users’ experiences; hermeneutics; illness and disease experiences; interpretative description; lived experience; mental health and illness; phenomenology; qualitative analysis; self; social development; suffering; young adults