The investigation of social skills and self- esteem levels of adults who are diagnosed and are not diagnosed with anxiety disorders

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the levels of social skills and self-esteem levels of people aged between 18-40 who are diagnosed with Anxiety Disorders and who are not according to having a diagnosis and gender. This study has been conducted among 115 people. 60 of them received an anxiety disorder diagnosis (Obsessive- compulsive disorder, generalized anxiaty disorder, panic disorder and social anxiety disorder) and 55 of the people (30 of them are teachers and 25 of them are undergraduate students at the Education Department) didn't receive any psychiatric diagnosis. In the study, to define the level of social skills and the subscales of social skills "The Social Skills Inventory" (Riggio, 1986) is used. "Self- Esteem Scale" (Rosenberg, 1963) is used to define the levels of self esteem. The general information about the participants are collected by using "Personal Information Scale" which is developed by the researcher. Apart from that Hamilton Anxiety Scale, Beck Anxiety Scale, Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale, Yale Brown Obsessive- Compulsive Disorder Scale and Beck Depression Scale are used to be able to define if the control grup have any kind of anxiety disorder. Two- way MANOVA is applied as the analysis method to determine if the levels of social skills and self-esteem of participant are significantly differentiated according to diagnosis and gender. According to the results of the study, the levels of subdimensions of the Social Skills Inventory, "Emotinal Control" and " Social Sensitivity" are differentiated according to gender. "Social Expressivity", "Social Control" and "Social Sensitivity" subdimensions are significantly differentiated according to diagnosis but "Emotional Sensitivity", "Emotional Control" and "Emotional Expressivity" are not differentiated significantly according to diagnosis. The self esteem of the women who are diagnosed with anxiety disorder is significantly lower than the self esteem of the men who have the anxiety disorder diagnosis, the men who don't have diagnosis and the women who don't have the diagnosis. Keywords: Anxiety disorders, social skills, self- esteem.