Azza Ali Taha^{1, 2,}, Etemad AA El-shereef^{2, 3}, Taghreed Ismail Mohammed Abdullah⁴, Rehab Ismail Mohammed Abdullah⁵, Wedad Abdullah Mutheeb Aldahasi⁴

Background: Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is highly prevalent among adolescents but little is known about its prevalence in Saudi adolescents. Objectives: we aimed to determine the prevalence of SAD and investigate its associated correlates among Saudi adolescent females. Methods: A cross sectional study design was conducted at Taif university in the period from January to May 2016. A self-report pre-designed questionnaire was distributed to the students about personal factors and Social Phobia Inventory (SPIN) which is a reliable and valid psychometric tool of screening SAD. Results: Data of 957 female students were analyzed and rendered a prevalence of 16.3% for SAD among them. Most of the affected students had a moderate degree of the disorder in 43.5% of cases. Personal factors significantly associated with SAD in univariate analysis were obese weight perception (p <0.001), having body deformities (p = 0.004), insufficient income (p = 0.003), 1st birth order (p = 0.006), parental conflict (p = 0.003), parental death (p <0.001) and smoking (p <0.001). Conclusion and recommendations: Our results show there is a high prevalence of SAD among female university students in Taif, Saudi Arabia. Independent personal factors associated with SAD in our study were smoking, parent death and obese weight perception. Based on the high prevalence encountered in our study, we recommend early detection and intervention to reduce the overall burden associated with this psychiatric disorder in the adolescent population as emphasized by the literature.

adolescent, female, social phobia, social anxiety