Epidemiology Of Phobias

A phobia is an extreme or irrational fear of something. Many phobias are in relation to one another. As people, we must realize that phobias cannot be fixed by ourselves. In order to help individuals that we may encounter, we must completely understand phobias. We cannot judge them for something they cannot help. To help an individual feel more at ease it is our job to know the causes, effects, impacts, and treatments of their phobia. This would help to completely understand the phobia and in the end, help us all to support each

Known as a mental disorder a phobia is a persistent fear of a specific object, activity, or situation that leads to compelling desire to avoid it. Phobias tend to affect the way people live their lives, for example, their working and social environments, considering that they last for a very long time and are capable to cause intense psychological physical stress. It is considered today the most common mental and anxiety disorder in the United States (Matig Mavissakalian & David H. Barlow 1981 pp 2). There are many phobias such as: the fear of aging, fear of changing, fear of clowns, fear of getting fat, fear of being in closed spaces, etc.

The underlying psychodynamic explanation is that the anxiety expressed towards the phobic stimuli is in fact a displacement of an internal anxiety. Here, phobias are associated with unconscious sexual fears (id impulses) and they operate through defence mechanisms of ‘repression’ and ‘displacement. ’ The original source of fear is repressed into the unconscious and the fear is then displaced onto another person, object or situation. As a result this fear appears to be irrational as there is no conscious explanation for it. Phobias develop as result of psychosexual stages of development. Psychic energy gets attached to a particular object as a way of overcoming the conflict and consequently the object symbolizes the conflict. For example, fixation at the phallic phase may result in a fear of spiders as the spider may represent a fear of the sexual organs. (Abraham

Discuss issues of reliability and validity associated with the classification and diagnosis of phobic disorders (24 marks)

“While biological factors certainly increase the vulnerability to developing fear and phobia, findings have not yet confirmed that these behaviors are controlled by biological mechanisms” (Rofé). Treating and understanding, psychoanalysis, phobias are believed to be a defense mechanism against trauma that might have been brought up as child. It still debated wether phobias are biological or created through life experiences. Due to varied experiments and evaluation, stating phobias derive from young childhood traumas would be untruthful and not factual. In the theory of psychoanalytic fear and phobias are created if the child remembers the experience which have brought

Introduction: Almost everyone has an irrational fear or two—of mice, for example, or your annual dental checkup. For most people, these fears are minor. But when fears become so severe that they cause tremendous anxiety and interfere with your normal life, they’re called phobias. A phobia is an intense fear of something that, in reality, poses little or no actual danger. Common phobias and fears include closed-in places, heights, highway driving, flying insects, snakes, and needles. However, we can develop phobias of virtually anything. Most phobias develop in childhood, but they can also develop in adults. If you

life of man on the planet. Fears are of many kinds, Fear of objects, fear people, fear of the future,

A behavioural psychologist by the name of Joseph Wolpe helped clients in getting rid of their phobias in a process that would be much quicker than the process of psychodynamic which is the explanation that humans functioning is based on interactions of drives and forces which occur within the body such as unconsciousness and the various structures of personality. The basis of psychodynamic was introduced by an Austrian neurologist, Sigmund Freud. The reason Wolpe conducted this study was to find the most effective way in to perform systematic desensitization to eradicate people’s phobia. The hypothesis which Wolpe used was that to remove people’s phobia a fear should be combined with something that is also relaxing to the body and that eventually

Phobias have impacted millions of people just in the United States. Whether they or someone they know has a phobia, phobias have affected their lives somehow. Researchers have found various methods for treating these phobias, but still have not found the exact cause for the development of phobias. To help organize these phobias, researchers have created three main categories that group the phobias by the general subject of fear. As previously stated, researchers have not yet determined the cause of the development of phobias, but have narrowed it down to two main theories. With treatments, researchers have been a bit more successful with finding working treatments, however, there still aren’t very many alternatives. Through the use of three broad categories of phobias, probable causes and treatments can be determined.

There are fears which are healthy and can be separated from extended fears in phobias. The patient in phobia case feels troubled with overstated, unreasonable fear and anxiety confronting direct contact with a certain object the lift and situation that stimulate immediately panic attack. The possibility of exposing their certain fear or certain situation could have an effect on the nature of response (Flykt, 2005). Mrs. F also is conscious that this situation of anxiety is irrational and it does affect in her daily life with a matter of phobia reaction. According to some researches if this phobia it lasts up to six months then it is classified in the group of suffering from phobia disorder (American Psychiatric Association, 2000).

Now we come to the third category. Fear of open spaces. In this writers opinion this one is the worst. It can severely impact how one lives their day to day life. Could you imagine not being able to step outside of your home? In over 12 years? Unfortunately that does happen to people. The term they use for this is Agoraphobia. This literally means “the fear of leaving home or a safe place”. While once again, no physical harm comes with this, the mental toll it can take on someone is not to be underestimated. Anxiety is bad as it is, but the extreme anxiety of one who suffers from Agoraphobia is even worse. It usually starts with a more mild panic attack which then makes the person fear having another type of panic attack while away from the home. This obviously leads them to not want to leave their home, constantly fearing another attack and avoiding anything that might trigger one.

It is very important that people suffering from phobias be treated, in order to be able to enjoy their lives to a higher extent, literally speaking for those individuals suffering from acrophobia.

Phobias involve a sense of endangerment or a fear of harm; just thinking about what you’re scared about can make you fearful. Some symptoms are dizziness, nausea, a sense unreality, a fear of dying and, can even lead to a full scale anxiety attack and symptoms usually happen when the person is scared. (Winerman, 2005)

Thereby it is not completely clear, what the causes for phobia are. Phobia is often caused by something scary that happened earlier in somebody’s life, but not every one develop phobias after special experiences. An explanation for this could be that for some people certain parts of the brain and specific neural pathways are associated with phobias. It is

It is not the way you live along your phobia as if it does not exist, but it is how you learn to overcome this phobia in a way that it would cease to exist. Not every person experiencing a fear necessary has a phobia. They are two different aspects in which it depends on the degree of suffering. For example, fear is when you feel anxious and have a slight disruption during turbulence or flying. Phobia is not going to your best friend’s island wedding because you fear flying in an airplane. I think this is a major conflict were people become unaware of the difference and directly jump into the assumption of having a phobia. Every person has a fear that may conquer his/her body, but life is too short to allow it to do so. Grow the courage to face your fears as it may take you into