Is shyness good or bad? For many shy people, it's a difficult question to answer. They don't know if it would be better to accept themselves or change.

Being shy may not be uncommon for children, but when it endures for us as teens and adults, shyness impedes the kinds of social connections that can enhance our talents and creative expression.

A shy child may learn to be more outgoing, but a study suggests that shy temperament may be inherited and a brain marker for it does not change as the person ages. In the study, researchers conducted brain scans on 22-year-olds and found that those who had been classified 20 years before as inhibited or shy children had a distinctive reaction in their brains when confronted with novel images. The amygdala structure in their brains responded much more actively to unexpected sights than did those subjects who had been judged as children to be more outgoing, said Jerome Kagan, a researcher in the department of psychology at Harvard University.

New research by the HealthEmotions Research Institute and Department of Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health indicates that the brains of those suffering from anxiety and severe shyness in social situations consistently respond more strongly to stress, and show signs of being anxious even in situations that others find safe.

It may seem baffling, even bizarre, that ordinary shyness could assume the dimension of a mental disease. But if a youngster is reserved, the odds are high that a psychiatrist will diagnose social anxiety disorder and recommend treatment.

What's wrong with being shy, and just when and how did bashfulness and other ordinary human behaviors in children and adults become psychiatric disorders treatable with powerful, potentially dangerous drugs, asks a Northwestern University scholar in a new book that already is creating waves in the mental health community.

By Anna Buckley, BBC News -- Most of us are shy to some degree, but acute shyness is one of the most under-recognised mental health problems of the modern age, say some. So when is being shy an illness?