A phobia is an irrational and excessive fear of an object or situation. In most cases, the phobia involves a sense of danger or a fear of harm. Agoraphobia, for example, is the fear of being trapped in an unavoidable location or situation.
Phobia Symptoms
Phobic symptoms can occur through exposure to the feared object or situation, or sometimes merely through thinking about the feared object. Typical symptoms associated with phobias include:
•Breathlessness
•Dizziness, trembling, and increased heart rate
•Fear of dying
•Nausea
•Preoccupation with the feared object
•A sense of unreality
In some cases, these symptoms may escalate into a full-scale anxiety attack.
In other cases, such as with hypochondriasis, a person may seek out medical care due to a constant concern with imagined illnesses or imminent death.
Types of Phobias
The American Psychiatric Association defines phobias as anxiety disorders and categorizes them into three different types:
•Agoraphobia: This describes a fear of being trapped in an inescapable place or situation. As a result, the phobic individual may begin to avoid such situations. In some cases, this fear can become so pervasive and overwhelming that the individual even fears to leave their home.
•Specific phobias: These involve the fear of a particular object (such as snakes or butterflies and moths). Such phobias typically fall into one of four different categories: situational, animals, medical, or environmental. A few examples of common fear objects include spiders, dogs, needles, natural disasters, heights, and flying.
•Social phobias: A fear of social situations includes an extreme and pervasive fear of social situations. In some cases, this fear may center on a very particular type of social situation such as public speaking. In other instances, people may fear to perform any task in front of other people for fear that they will be somehow publicly embarrassed.
More examples of the four major types of specific phobias include:
•Animal: Fear of snakes, rodents, cats, or birds.
•Medical: Fear of seeing blood or visiting a doctor.
•Natural environment: Fear of lightning, water, storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, or mudslides.
•Situational: Fear of bridges, leaving home, or driving.
Prevalence of Social Anxiety Disorder
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, social anxiety disorder affects about 7% of adults in a given year and specific phobias affect approximately 9%. In general, women are affected more than men.
Phobia Treatments
There are a number of treatment approaches for phobias, and the effectiveness of each approach depends on the person and their type of phobia.
In exposure treatments,the person is strategically exposed to their feared object in order to help them overcome their fear. One type of exposure treatment is flooding, in which the patient is confronted by the feared object for an extended length of time without the opportunity to escape. The goal of this method is to help the individual face their fear and realize that the feared object will not harm them.
Another method often used in phobia treatment is counter-conditioning. In this method, the person is taught a new response to the feared object. Rather than panic in the face of the feared object or situation, the person learns relaxation techniques to replace anxiety and fear.
This new behavior is incompatible with the previous panic response, so the phobic response gradually diminishes. Counter-conditioning is often used with people who are unable to handle exposure treatments and has been effective for treating children and adolescents.
Finally, for both adults and children with social phobia, medication like a low dose of a benzodiazepine or potentially an antidepressant (like a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, or SSRI) in combination with cognitive-behavioral therapy can prove helpful.
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