Three questions, rated for how much each applied to you over the past week. A validated cutoff of 6 identifies probable social anxiety disorder. About one minute, free and anonymous.
The Mini-SPIN (Mini Social Phobia Inventory) is a three-item screening test for generalized social anxiety disorder, derived by Connor and colleagues from the longer 17-item Social Phobia Inventory. It takes about a minute. Each item is rated 0–3–4 for how much the statement applied to you over the past week, giving a total from 0 to 12.
Three questions sounds too short to be useful. It performs remarkably well anyway: in the original validation work, a cutoff score of 6 identified generalized social anxiety disorder with roughly 90% accuracy. That is why it is widely used as a first-pass screen in primary care and psychiatry.
Total score ranges from 0 to 12. The single validated threshold is 6.
What it can't tell you: whether the anxiety is generalized social anxiety disorder or something adjacent. Avoidant personality disorder, autism spectrum presentations, panic disorder with situational triggers, depression-related withdrawal, and untreated ADHD (where the fear is of being caught unprepared rather than of scrutiny itself) all produce elevated scores. So does trauma. Separating those is what an evaluation is for.
Cognitive behavioral therapy with exposure has the strongest evidence of any treatment for social anxiety disorder, and its benefits tend to hold after treatment ends. Group CBT is particularly well suited to it, for the obvious reason.
Medication works too. SSRIs — sertraline, escitalopram, paroxetine — and the SNRI venlafaxine all have good evidence, typically taking four to six weeks for full effect. Propranolol is sometimes used situationally for performance anxiety, where the problem is a racing heart and shaking hands rather than pervasive fear of scrutiny. Benzodiazepines are generally avoided: they blunt the anxiety in the moment and, in doing so, interfere with the learning that exposure therapy depends on.
Social anxiety and adult ADHD overlap more than most people expect — if you also struggle with focus and follow-through, telling ADHD and anxiety apart is worth reading.
Scores run 0–12. A score of 6 or above is the validated cutoff for probable generalized social anxiety disorder — in the original validation study, that threshold identified the condition with roughly 90% accuracy.
The Mini-SPIN is validated and widely used, but it is a screening tool rather than a diagnostic one. It cannot establish duration, functional impairment, or rule out the other conditions that produce social avoidance.
Shyness is a temperament, and a perfectly ordinary one. Social anxiety disorder is diagnosed when fear of scrutiny is persistent, out of proportion to the actual threat, and drives avoidance that meaningfully interferes with work, education, or relationships.
CBT with exposure has the strongest evidence. SSRIs and venlafaxine are effective medications; propranolol is sometimes used for discrete performance situations. Benzodiazepines are generally avoided because they interfere with the extinction learning exposure depends on.
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