Do you fear even being in the audience for a speech?

The caption for today’s F Minus cartoon says:

“Wow, Ron. I did not realize your fear of public speaking included being in the audience.”

That is funny, but it is not really how psychiatrists divide things up. They would instead put Ron’s problem either under panic attacks or the more severe problem of panic disorder. According to Kessler et al, in the National Comorbidity Survey-Replication (NCS-R), 28.3% of U.S. adults had panic attacks sometime during their lives, but only 4.7% had panic disorder. So, Ron would be far from alone. I blogged about how In the NCS-R Ruscio et al had found that 21.2% feared public speaking/performance, and 10.7% had a phobia of it.     

The image of an audience came from an 1897 Puck magazine at the Library of Congress.