Alexinomia, the fear of saying other people’s names and using names actively in conversation, may be an overlooked symptom of social anxiety disorder, according to a study in the Journal of Anxiety Disorders.
Thomas Ditye, Ph.D., M.Sc., M.Res., of Sigmund Freud Private University in Vienna, and colleagues analyzed data from 190 adults (143 female, 40 male, 7 nonbinary) with a mean age of 30.3 years. First, the researchers assessed the participants for symptoms of social anxiety disorder using the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (SIAS), which measures the degree of psychological distress when interacting with other people, and the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS-SR), which measures anxiety and avoidance in relation to social interactions and performance situations. After that, participants completed the 24-item Alexinomia Questionnaire, an unpublished self-report questionnaire to measure symptoms related to anxious behavior with respect to saying names.
According to the SIAS, 67.9% of the participants had a high likelihood of social anxiety. The mean score for alexinomia in this group was 31.43, compared with 14.26 in the group with a low likelihood of social anxiety.
According to the LSAS-SR, 48.9% of participants fulfilled the criteria for social anxiety. For the LSAS, the researchers divided participants into groups according to the severity of their symptoms (low, mild, moderate, severe, highly severe). Those in the low symptom group had a mean alexinomia score of 16.20, compared with 36.81 in the mild symptom group, 32.33 in the moderate symptom group, 39.13 in the severe symptom group, and 38.29 in the highly severe symptom group.
“[O]ur findings could be the start of a discussion around adding alexinomia symptoms to assessments of social anxiety,” Ditye and colleagues wrote. “To support this discussion, it is necessary to reliably measure the prevalence of alexinomia in socially anxious individuals as well as in samples with other psychological disorders. Therefore, a standardized, clinical tool is urgently needed for its diagnosis.”
For related information, see the Psychiatric News article “Attention Training Program May Improve Social Anxiety Symptoms.”
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