Is Social phobia a mental Illness?

[Colin]

I like to call it a condition, as in Social Anxiety Condition. I think it is one of many mindsets which are not optimal in this form of social setting of the modern-day. I have no idea if mindsets can be changed to suit the 21st century, if in this aspect our minds have evolved a lot over a couple thousand years (or even couple hundred!), and if the thoughts are really "irrational".
I'm not trying to put blame/responsibility on something else, just trying to figure out what on Earth is happening?
Ha I agree we might be playing word games, but isn't proper identification needed for proper treatment?

 

[Septor]

Well I think we are all talking about the same thing here it's just the words that we are debating over.Some people I think are shying away from the word mental illness because they don't want to be identified with the word because of the stigma attached to it.Which is completely understandable but I do think it is a mental illness.Now I think there are a lot of different reasons for social phobia some might be connected to some thing wrong in the brain.Some might be learned.In my opinion.

In the end though it's just a word and the suffering is still the same.

 

[nedkelly]

Very true Septor! I also think people are afraid to admit they have a form of mental illness, which is understandable, but my doctor did say it is a form of mental illness. Which i had always believed. It's nothing to be ashamed of people. It dosen't mean we are crazy. But yes, there is huge stigma with all mental illness's, and i do worry people think we are axe murder's or something. The public is so much more aware now, but there is a long way to go. There will always be people who will think we are strange/weird, but some people's thought's you cannot change unfortunately.

 

[Quixote]

It might be that some people dislike the word "mental illness" because of the associations it brings about (screaming guy running after somebody with a huge knfe...) but personally I don't mind too much about that, actually I think it would make it easier to treat if it was an illness.

Yet, as I said in my previous post, I really don't think it is, strictly speaking at least (words obviously can have a wide range of meanings, as was rightly pointed out). It's just a very bad learned behaviour, a very bad "habit" in a way, and, as such, it is mostly up to ourselves to make efforts to change it.

I also agree with what was said in one post, that SA might be a byproduct of the modern organization of society, which is complex, changing, competitive, and requires people to be constantly very efficient. Unfortunately, not much can be done about that. Besides, it wasn't that good in the old times either: people had no SA perhaps, but there was no lack of pretty nasty diseases in its place...