Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) and, more generally, social fears are common in young people. Although avoidance behaviors are known to be an important maintaining factor of social anxiety, little is known about the severity and occurrence of avoidance behaviors in young people from the general population, hampering approaches for early identification and intervention. Symptoms, syndromes, and diagnoses of DSM-5 mental disorders including SAD were assessed in a random population-based sample of 14-21-year-olds (n = 1,180) from Dresden, Germany, in 2015/2016 using a standardized diagnostic interview (DIA-X-5/D-CIDI). An adapted version of the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale was used to ascertain the extent of social fears and avoidance. Diagnostic criteria for lifetime SAD were met by n = 82 participants, resulting in a weighted lifetime prevalence of 6.6%. Social anxiety was predominantly reported for test situations and when speaking or performing in front of others. Avoidance was most prevalent in the latter situations. On average, anxiety and avoidance first occurred at ages 11 and 12, respectively, with avoidance occurring in most cases either at about the same age as anxiety or slightly later. In the total sample, lifetime prevalence for most DSM-5 disorders increased with the severity of social anxiety and avoidance. Results underline the need for preventive or early intervention efforts especially regarding test anxiety and fear and avoidance of speaking in front of others. These situations are particularly relevant in youth. Avoidance behaviors may also be discussed as diagnostic marker for early case identification.

Introduction: Chronic recreational methamphetamine use causes dopaminergic neurotoxicity, which has been linked to impairments in executive functioning. Within this functional domain, response selection and the resolution of associated conflicts have repeatedly been demonstrated to be strongly modulated by dopamine. Yet, it has never been investigated whether chronic methamphetamine use leads to general impairments in response selection (i.e., irrespective of consumption-associated behavior) after substance use is discontinued.Materials and Methods: We tested n = 24 abstinent methamphetamine users (on average 2.7 years of abstinence) and n = 24 individually matched controls in a cross-sectional design with a flanker task.Results: Compared to healthy controls, former methamphetamine consumers had significantly slower reaction times, but did not show differences in the size of the flanker or Gratton effect, or post-error slowing. Complementary Bayesian analyses further substantiated this lack of effects despite prior consumption for an average of 7.2 years.Discussion: The ability to select a correct response from a subset of conflicting alternatives, as well as the selective attention required for this seem to be largely preserved in case of prolonged abstinence. Likewise, the ability to take previous contextual information into account during response selection and to process errors seem to be largely preserved as well. Complementing previously published finding of worse inhibition/interference control in abstinent consumers, our results suggest that not all executive domains are (equally) impaired by methamphetamine, possibly because different cognitive processes require different levels of dopamine activity.