Friends and family can also help loved ones cope with needle phobia, McMurtry says. The majority of those who develop a specific phobia experience symptoms for the first time in childhood. Often, individuals regularly experience symptoms with periods of remission before complete remission occurs. However, specific phobias that persist into adulthood are likely to have a more chronic course. Specific phobias in older adults have been associated with decreased quality of life. People with specific phobias have an increased risk of suicide. Greater impairment is observed in patients with multiple phobias. [1] Response to treatment is relatively high, but many do not seek treatment due to lack of access, ability to avoid phobia, or reluctance to cope with the dreaded object for repeated sessions of CBT. [50] He talks about his strange phobia, what makes him cry, and what he and Gore Vidal have in common. Agoraphobia is often thought of as a fear of open spaces, but it`s much more complex than that. Usually, these types of „phobias” are described as fear, aversion, disapproval, prejudice, hatred, discrimination, or hostility toward the object of the „phobia.” This is a form of exaggeration.
Rachman suggested three ways to develop phobias: direct or classical conditioning (exposure to phobic stimuli), proxy acquisition (seeing other phobic stimuli experiment) and information/teaching acquisition (learning from phobic stimuli from others). [12] [13] Today`s society has given us a phobia potentially as strong as acrophobia or fear of flying: smartphone anxiety. Simple phobias can be treated by progressive exposure to the object, animal, location, or situation that causes anxiety and anxiety. This is called desensitization or self-exposure therapy. But if you have a complex phobia, such as agoraphobia, it can be very difficult to live a normal life. A psychiatrist will likely ask about current symptoms and family history, especially if other family members have had phobias. You may want to point out any experience or trauma that could have triggered the phobia – for example, a dog attack that leads to a fear of dogs. Tranquilizers such as benzodiazepines (clonazepam, alprazolam) are another treatment option that can help people relax by reducing the anxiety they feel. [44] Benzodiazepines may be useful in the acute treatment of severe symptoms, but the risk-benefit balance generally militates against their long-term use in phobic disorders.
[45] This class of drugs has recently been shown to be effective when used for negative behaviours such as excessive alcohol consumption. [44] Despite this positive result, benzodiazepines are used with caution because of the side effects and the risk of developing addiction or withdrawal symptoms. For a specific phobia, for example, if the phobic stimulus does not occur regularly, such as flying, a short course may be offered. No one likes needles, although some patients have real phobias that can prevent them from getting vaccinated in the first place. Phobias can be divided into specific phobias, social anxiety disorder and agoraphobia. [1] [2] Specific phobias are subdivided to include specific animals, the natural environment, blood or injuries, and specific situations. [1] The most common are fear of spiders, fear of snakes and fear of heights. [7] Specific phobias can be caused by a negative experience with the object or situation in early childhood. [1] Social phobia is when a person fears a situation because they fear that others will judge them. [1] Agoraphobia is a fear of a situation due to a perceived difficulty or inability to escape.
[1] The amygdala is an almond-shaped mass of nuclei located deep in the medial temporal lobe of the brain. It treats events associated with anxiety and is associated with social phobia and other anxiety disorders. The ability of the amygdala to respond to anxious stimuli occurs through fear conditioning. Like classical conditioning, the amygdala learns to associate a conditioned stimulus with a negative or avoidant stimulus, creating a conditioned fear response often seen in phobic individuals. The amygdala is responsible for recognizing certain stimuli or cues as dangerous and plays a role in storing threatening stimuli in memory. The basolateral nuclei (or basolateral amygdala) and hippocampus interact with the memory memory of the amygdala. This link suggests why memories are often memorized more vividly when they have emotional meaning. [27] In the frontal lobes, other cortices associated with phobia and fear are the anterior cingulate cortex and the medial prefrontal cortex. When processing emotional stimuli, studies of phobic responses to facial expressions have shown that these areas are involved in processing and responding to negative stimuli.
[25] The ventromedial prefrontal cortex is said to affect the amygdala by monitoring its response to emotional stimuli or even anxious memories. [22] In particular, the medial prefrontal cortex is active during fear eradication and is responsible for long-term extinction. Stimulation of this area reduces conditioned anxiety responses, so its role in inhibiting the amygdala and its response to anxious stimuli may exist. [26] If you have a social phobia, you may be afraid to speak in front of people for fear of embarrassing yourself and being humiliated in public. Prior to the development of drug therapy, the treatment of phobias and mental disorders relied solely on therapy such as CBT. Although therapy can be incredibly effective for many, it does not always achieve the desired effect. Interventional psychiatry is an additional branch of medicine that has expanded treatment options, and further research continues to investigate effectiveness and applications. Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) are two examples of device-based interventions that are widely used. [63] [64] In terms of use in the treatment of phobias and anxiety disorders as a whole, TMS is being studied as an augmentation option for those who do not have the desired response to other treatment options or medication side effects. Much of the research has been done to investigate the use of TMS in PTSD and generalized anxiety disorder. A 2019 meta-analysis found only two clinical trials on the use of TMS for specific phobias, one of which examined anxiety and avoidance rates in people with acrophobia.
Although the study found a reduction in anxiety and avoidance rates after two TMS sessions due to the limited number of studies and small sample size, few conclusions can be drawn. [65] D-cycloserine (MDS), a partial agonist of N-methyl-D-aspartate, is an additional testing approach for progression-specific phobias, which, according to a meta-analysis, had better outcomes and less severity of symptoms when used prior to the onset of CBT. [66] It is recommended to treat certain phobias with exposure therapy, in which the person is introduced to the situation or object in question until the fear disappears. [2] Medications are not helpful for some phobias. [2] Social phobia and agoraphobia can be treated with counseling, medication, or a combination of both. [4] [5] Medications used include antidepressants, benzodiazepines or beta-blockers. [4] A phobia is a persistent, excessive and unrealistic fear of an object, person, animal, activity or situation. It is a type of anxiety disorder. A person with a phobia tries to either avoid the thing that triggers the fear or endure it with great fear and difficulty.
Specific phobias affect about 6-8% of people in the Western world and 2-4% in Asia, Africa and Latin America in any given year. [1] Social phobia affects about 7% of people in the United States and 0.5-2.5% of people in the rest of the world. [6] Agoraphobia affects approximately 1.7% of people. [6] Women are about twice as likely to be affected by phobias as men. [1] [6] The typical onset of a phobia is about 10-17, and rates are lower with age. [1] [6] People with phobias are more likely to attempt suicide. [1] Phobias are a common form of anxiety disorder, and the distribution is heterogeneous by age and sex. An American study conducted by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) found that between 8.7% and 18.1% of Americans have phobias,[51] making it the most common mental illness in women of all ages and the second most common illness in men over the age of 25. Between 4 and 10 percent of all children suffer from specific phobias in their lifetime,[30] and social phobias occur in one to three percent of children. [52] [53] [54] Phobias are not always officially diagnosed. Most people with a phobia are fully aware of the problem. Several terms with the suffix -phobia are used non-clinically to imply irrational fear or hatred.
Examples: But if you have a phobia, constantly trying to avoid what you`re afraid of could make the situation worse. A person will sometimes choose to live with a phobia and will take great care to avoid the object or situation they are afraid of. There are several methods of treating phobias. These methods include systematic desensitization, progressive relaxation, virtual reality, modeling, medication, and hypnotherapy. In recent decades, psychologists and other researchers have developed effective behavioral, pharmacological, and technological interventions to treat phobia. [31] With the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003, much research has been conducted to investigate specific genes that may cause or contribute to disease. [19] Candidate genes were the subject of most of these studies until the last decade, when the cost and ability to perform genome-wide analyses became more readily available. The GLRB gene has been identified as a possible target for agoraphobia.
[20] One area still in development is the study of epigenetic components, or the interaction of the environment with genes by methylation.