Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) is neither just shyness, nor for most victims does it merely involve an inability to speak in public. For most sufferers of this disorder, it could be a pervasive, disabling condition that steals away opportunities for a richer, fuller life. Having an early onset and combining high prevalence rates with serious negative effects on functioning and quality of life, SAD is a public health problem of considerable magnitude. Hence, its assessment using a standardized measure and timely intervention can completely preempt or at least lessen the severity of this psychiatric illness. So far SAD among students in higher education institutions is a less investigated area of study in Pakistan. Students generally avoid reporting difficulties they experience while making interactions with people and quietly try to combat with their fears in social settings. Proper and timely diagnosis and treatment of SAD are required, and for this purpose, the need of the hour is to create a culturally oriented measuring instrument for proper surveillance of the student population in Pakistan. This paper, drawing from a study conducted at Higher Education Institutions (HEI) across Pakistan, addresses this issue by devising an indigenous, comprehensive, well-founded and valid scale of social anxiety in the Urdu language. The use of this scale, both in general and patient care settings, would effectively screen individuals who could be at risk of being victimized by this disorder. This alternative Social Anxiety Scale (SAS) carefully evaluates social behaviors and attitudes while also ensuring that cultural perspectives are considered, which would also encourage clinicians to evaluate SAD in Pakistani population.

Objective: The main objective of this study was to explore the impact of hearing impairment on psychological distress and subjective well-being in older adults with hearing impairment. Methods: The study with cross sectional research design was conducted in three public sector hospitals of Lahore, from February 2017 to June 2017. Participants of the study were adults aged 50-90 years and with hearing impairment, selected through non-probability sampling technique. Demographic Information sheet, Kessler psychological distress scale by Kessler, Mroczek. in 1992 and Satisfaction with life scale by Diener, Emmons, Larsen, Griffin in 1985 were used for data collection. SPSS 21 was used to analyze the data. Results: There were 200 participants with age ranged from 53 to 89 years (M= 65.92, SD= 9.70). Of the total, 100 (50%) subjects were men and 100 (50%) were women. Significant gender differences were found in psychological distress, with men reflecting more symptoms of psychological distress (p<0.01), whereas non-significant gender differences were found in case of subjective well-being (p>0.05). Moreover, psychological distress was observed as a predictor of subjective well-being (p<0.01). One-way analysis of variance revealed insignificant differences of psychological distress and subjective well-being across three levels of hearing impairment. Conclusion: Early diagnosis and rehabilitation of age-related hearing loss improves the overall quality of life of older adults living with hearing impairment. doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.36.6.2457 How to cite this:Niazi Y, Ejaz B, Muazzam A. Impact of hearing impairment on psychological distress and subjective well-being in older adults. Pak J Med Sci. 2020;36(6):---------. doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.36.6.2457 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

The present study compared the level of life satisfaction and emotional intelligence of teachers employed at special education institutes, and teachers working at regular education institutes. The purposive sampling was used to select the sample for this study. The sample of the study was comprised of 100 teachers, 50 (male=25, female=25) working at special education institutions and 50 (male=25, female=25) regular education institutions of Bahawalpur, Pakistan. The age range of participants was 21-60 years. Satisfaction with Life Scale, Self-report measure of Emotional Intelligence and demographic information sheet were individually applied. Results showed that special education teachers have a higher level of life satisfaction and Emotional intelligence as compared to the teachers employed at regular education institutions. As for as demographic variables are concerned the results of the present study indicated that there was no significant difference in the level of life satisfaction and emotional intelligence with regard to the gender and age of teachers working at special education of teachers.

Objective: To find out the degree and direction of correlation between social anxiety and self-consciousness and to investigate the predictive role social anxiety plays in determining self-consciousness among female university students. Method: The study with cross sectional research design was conducted using non-probability purposive sampling technique to collect data. Participants of the research were university students within the age range of 18 to 26 years and were gathered from different public and private sector universities. Reliable instruments including Social Anxiety Scale, Self-consciousness Scale- R and demographic sheet were used. Descriptive statistics and linear regression analysis were employed for data analysis. Results: All the subjects in the study, 300(100%) were females with different educational qualifications ranging from Intermediate to Doctorate. The overall mean age was 21.14±2.06 years. Interesting findings revealed that age had significant inverse correlation with social anxiety (r=-0.17, p<0.01), whereas no significant relation was found between age and self-consciousness. Private self-consciousness was positively correlated with public self-consciousness (r=0.55, p<0.01), evaluation anxiety (r=.18, p<0.01), and interaction anxiety (r=0.11, p<0.05) whereas significant positive correlation was observed between public self-consciousness and all domains of social anxiety i.e. performance anxiety (r=0.21, p<0.01), interaction anxiety (r=0.29, p<0.01), and evaluation anxiety (r=0.35, p<0.01). Moreover social anxiety turned out to be a strong positive predictor of self-consciousness. Continuous...

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