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What is Phobia?
Phobia is classified as a type of anxiety disorder characterised by significant fear about an object or situation that is not a threat.
In phobias, the fear is activated only when the person gets closer to the feared situation or sometimes even only thinking or imagining it. The fear is often recognised by the person as exaggerated, but still there is irresistible need to avoid or escape.
A phobia may or may may not be accompanied by panic attacks.
Fear is different from anxiety. Fear is described as "the possibility that something dreaded or unwanted may occur". Fear is a cognitive appraisal of actual potential danger. The psychological process is awareness, recognition, and anticipation that something undesirable may occur. Anxiety is described as a "tense emotional state". Fear represents a predisposition to perceive a specific set of conditions as a threat and to react with anxiety if exposed to those conditions. Fear is an appraisal of potential harm (appraisal of danger), and anxiety is the unpleasant feeling state (the physiological reaction that occurs when fear is provoked).
Fear is about the possible /expected consequences of exposure to the perceived threat. The anxiety is elicited by anticipation of physical, psychological, or psychosocial suffering.
Fear and anxiety are future-orientated, except for conditions related to trauma.
Research shows that people can develop a phobia of almost anything.
The most common types of phobias are:
Situational phobias- lightening, enclosed/opened spaces, darkness, flying and heights
Animal phobias – spiders snaked, dogs, cats, mice
Injury phobias- injections, dentists, other injuries
Agoraphobia- fear of entering close/open spaces or crowded places, leaving one's own home or being in areas from which "escape" is difficult
Social phobia - fear of public speaking, fear of misbehaving in public place
The most common symptoms of Specific Phobia are:
Marked fear of a particular stimulus restricted to the phobic object/situation and consistently occurs in the presence of the phobic object/situation only
Is recognised by the individual as excessive or unreasonable when distant
Provokes psychological/bodily symptoms that are primarily caused by anxiety
The fear, the anxiety, or the avoidance are disproportionate to the actual dangers
Avoidance
he fear is present only in anticipation of encountering a particular stimulus
The fear disappears fast if the stimulus is not present any longer and quickly vanishes upon distancing
Types of Phobias
There is not an exact number of known phobias, but they are classified as five main types of specific phobias:
1. Natural environment type
aquaphobia - fear of water
astraphobia - fear of storms
ancraophobia - fear of wind
antlophobia - fear of flooding
chionophobia - fear of snow
heliophobia- fear of the sun
nyctophobia - fear of darkness
lilapsophobia - fear of tornadoes and hurricanes
pluviophobia - fear of weather associated with rain and storms
thermophobia - fear of hot weather
2. Animal type phobias (zoophobia)- Fear of animals which can be divided further into fear of specific animals, such as:
·ailurophobia - fear of cats
arachnophobia - fear of spiders
cynophobia - fear of dogs
entomophobia - fear of insects
musophobia - fear of mice
ophidiophobia - fear of snakes
ornithophobia - fear of birds
spheksophobia - fear of wasps
ichthyophobia - fear of fish
3. Situational type phobias
acrophobia - fear of heights
aerophobia - fear of flying
claustrophobia - fear of closed spaces
dentophobia - fear of going to the dentist
glossophobia - fear of public speaking
enochlophobia - fear of crowds
4. Blood, injection, injury type
hemophobia - fear of blood
iatrophobia - fear of doctors
nosocomephobia - fear of hospitals
mysophobia (germophobia) - fear of contamination
5. Other type of specific phobias - all phobias that do not fit into the four previous types
Prevalence
The median age of onset of specific phobia is eight years, although it can occur at any age.
Lifetime prevalence for PD/PDA is 3.5% to 5.3%
Women are two times more at increased risk for developing PD/PDA compared to men (Katerndahl & Realini, 1993).
Symptoms are typically chronic, with an overall remission rate of 39% and a recurrence rate of 82% in women and 51% in men.
Specific phobia affects approximately 13% of the general population.
In the UK, 21% of the population, more commonly women (26%) than men, fear spiders.
Arachnophobia – fear of spiders is the most prevalent phobia in the UK and worldwide
The rarest phobia has ever been described as Arachibutyrophobia – fear of peanut butter sticking in the roof of the mouth.
Children's developmentary typical phobias are usually self-limiting, but adult phobias, including all social phobias, tend to be chronic.
Treatments for Specific Phobia(s)
The psychological treatment for phobias with the most substantial research support is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). It can be offered as one extended session or four to six sessions of 50 min each.
Medications are not recommended for the treatment of phobias.
References:
American Psychiatric Association. (2022). Bipolar and related disorders. In Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed., text rev.) https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.books.9780890425787.x05_Anxiety_Disorders
Fears and Phobias / Psychology Tools – Retrieved from https://www.psychologytools.com/self-help/fears-and-phobias/
International Classification of Diseases, Eleventh Revision (ICD-11), World Health Organization (WHO) 2019/2021 https://icd.who.int/browse11. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 3.0 IGO licence (CC BY-ND 3.0 IGO).
Roy, Mélissa, et al. "The Critical Reception of the<I>DSM-5</I>: Towards a Typology of Audiences." Public Understanding of Science, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1177/0963662519868969.