A Comparative Study on Social Anxiety among Self-destructive and Non-Self-destructive Behavior of Adolescents

Abstract

Adolescence is a phase of major changes during the journey from childhood to adulthood. This stage comes with a lot of insecurities, worries, tension, stress, anxiety etc. in order to cope up with the changes. Sometimes, while combating these issues, an adolescent may faces failures and this drags him/her towards negativities such as self-destructive or self-harming behavior. With this comes other related symptoms such as stress, social and emotional anxiety, depression etc. which not only adds to hostility among adolescents but also increases the chance of self-destructive behavior. The aim of the present research is to study one such anxiety i.e. social anxiety among those adolescents who are having self-destructive behavior and also to compare the level of social anxiety with those of non self-destructive ones. In the present research study, a standardized test namely, Kutcher Generalized Social Anxiety Scale for Adolescents (K-GSAD-A) developed by Professor Stanley Kutcher is used which is possessing high reliability and validity. The test was conducted on 60 adolescents (30 subjects with self-destructive and 30 with non self-destructive behavior) selected from various educational institutions of Udaipur city. It was found that the level of social anxiety among adolescents with self-destructive behavior was high as compared to those of non self-destructive behavior and the difference was found to be clearly significant. This research study is found to be unique and very much useful in order to study and compare the levels of social anxiety and take corrective measures in order to reduce it.