Resources
Whether you're experiencing symptoms or supporting someone who is, our resources offer information and tools to help. Explore recommended reading, research highlights, and a free online screening.
Books
- Triumph Over Shyness
By Murray B. Stein, MD & John R. Walker, PhD
2002 New York: McGraw-Hill - The Hidden Face of Shyness
By Franklin Schneier, MD & Lawrence Welkowitz, PhD
1996 New York: Avon Books - The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of Social Anxiety Disorder
By Justin W. Weeks
2014 West Sussex, UK, John Wiley & Sons
Research Highlights
- Recent findings at our research center here at the Columbia University Medical Center have demonstrated promising steps forward in the development of psychotherapy and medication treatments which help people with social anxiety disorder.
- Our research team demostrate that medications belonging to the class known as the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRI's, are effective in the treatment of social anxiety disorder. In articles published in 1998 and 2005, Dr. Michael Liebowitz (then Director of the Social Anxiety Research Clinic) and his collaborators found Paxil (paroxetine) and Effexor (venlafaxine) to be effective in reducing social anxiety symptoms, with few side effects for most people.
- A series of studies comparing and combining cognitive-behavioral therapy and medication for social anxiety disorder has helped establish that cognitive-behavioral therapy can be equally effective as medication for many patients, and the combination of medication and therapy may be particularly effective.
- Another focus of the our clinic has been to improve understanding of biological factors that may be related to social anxiety and its treatment. In the late 1990s, Dr. Schneier and collaborators began to use PET imaging of the brain to measure chemical receptors in the brain. A series of studies identified differences in receptors for the neurotransmitter dopamine in persons with generalized social anxiety disorder. More recently, Dr. Schneier has used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to demonstrate differences in the way the brains of persons with social anxiety disorder process the experience of making direct eye contact and to predict responses to treatment.
References
- Schneier FR. Clinical Practice: Social anxiety disorder: New England Journal of Medicine 2006;355:1029-1036.
- Schneier FR, Pomplun M, Sy M, Hirsch J. Neural response to eye contact and paroxetine treatment in generalized social anxiety disorder. Psychiatry Research Neuroimaging. 2011;194(3):271-8. PMCID: PMC2745296
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Zhu X, Lazarov A, Dolan S, Bar-Haim Y, Dillon DG, Pizzagalli DA, Schneier F. Resting state connectivity predictors of symptom change during gaze-contingent music reward therapy of social anxiety disorder. Psychological Medicine 2022 Mar 22:1-9. doi: 10.1017/S0033291721005171. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 35314008; PMCID: PMC9612546.
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Schneier FR. When is pharmacological intervention recommended for adults with social anxiety disorder? Expert Rev Neurother. 2024 Sep 10:1-4. doi: 10.1080/14737175.2024.2401556. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 39254235.
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Massad R, Hertz-Palmor N, Blay Y, Gur S, Schneier FR, Lazarov A. In the eye of the beholder – validating the visual social anxiety scale (VSAS) in social anxiety disorder. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy. 2025: 1–29.
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Schneier F, Deitz-Green I, Seitov A, Handler L, Satchwell M, Taylor CT. Social anxiety and the positive valence system: A scoping review. J Mood Anxiety Disord. 2026 Apr 9;14:100178. doi: 10.1016/j.xjmad.2026.100178. PMID: 42006563; PMCID: PMC13091535.