Social anxiety and panic attacks represent distinct psychological constructs with differential symptom profiles, underlying features, and clinical presentations.
The retrieved literature supports the distinction between social anxiety and panic-related conditions. While broader dimensional taxonomies (like HiTOP) group them under broad internalizing or fear spectra, specialized validation studies (such as the MEDI development) and comparative clinical investigations (like Paper 11) confirm that social anxiety and panic/agoraphobia possess clearly distinct symptom profiles, behavioral correlates, and psychometric characteristics.