Social phobia syndrome in Japan.

Recently, social phobia has been described in DSM-III and in International Classification of Diseases (ICD)-10 (1986 Draft), as a diagnostic entity and classified under the anxiety disorders. Since the 1920s, Japanese psychiatrists have paid particular attention to these phobic states. Though, they have not yet given explicit behavioral diagnostic criteria to social phobia, they have elucidated many important facets of this phobic symptom complex, especially those of obsessional and delusional features manifested in embodied communications of the patient with this phobia. Thus, in Japan, social phobia syndrome has not been considered as a mere phobic anxiety disorder described in DSM-III or ICD-10.