Prevalent Frequency of Emotional and Physical Symptoms in Social Anxiety using Zero Shot Classification: An Observational Study

TL;DR

This observational study uses zero-shot classification on Reddit data to identify and quantify physical and emotional symptoms of social anxiety, revealing key prevalent symptoms and offering insights for clinical intervention.

Contribution

It introduces a novel BART-based zero-shot multi-label classification method to analyze social anxiety symptoms from large social media datasets.

Findings

Trembling is a prevalent physical symptom.

Fear of negative judgment is a common emotional symptom.

Distinct symptom patterns were identified in social anxiety.

Abstract

Social anxiety represents a prevalent challenge in modern society, affecting individuals across personal and professional spheres. Left unaddressed, this condition can yield substantial negative consequences, impacting social interactions and performance. Further understanding its diverse physical and emotional symptoms becomes pivotal for comprehensive diagnosis and tailored therapeutic interventions. This study analyze prevalence and frequency of social anxiety symptoms taken from Mayo Clinic, exploring diverse human experiences from utilizing a large Reddit dataset dedicated to this issue. Leveraging these platforms, the research aims to extract insights and examine a spectrum of physical and emotional symptoms linked to social anxiety disorder. Upholding ethical considerations, the study maintains strict user anonymity within the dataset. By employing a novel approach, the research utilizes BART-based multi-label zero-shot classification to identify and measure symptom prevalence and significance in the form of probability score for each symptom under consideration. Results uncover distinctive patterns: "Trembling" emerges as a prevalent physical symptom, while emotional symptoms like "Fear of being judged negatively" exhibit high frequencies. These findings offer insights into the multifaceted nature of social anxiety, aiding clinical practices and interventions tailored to its diverse expressions.