Phobia wiki

Welcome to the Phobia Wiki
This wiki is all about s, a psychological disorder in which a person (irrationally) fears specific things, such as fear of storms (procellaphobia), fear of having no escape (cleithrophobia/claustrophobia), fear of death (thanatophobia), and fear of ghosts (phasmophobia).

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Topic
Phobia (from the, Phóbos, meaning "fear" or "morbid fear") is, when used in the context of clinical psychology, a type of anxiety disorder, usually defined as a persistent fear of an object or situation in which the sufferer commits to great lengths in avoiding, typically disproportional to the actual danger posed, often being recognized as irrational. In the event the phobia cannot be avoided entirely, the sufferer will endure the situation or object with marked distress and significant interference in social or occupational activities.

The terms distress and impairment as defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV-TR) should also take into account the context of the sufferer's environment if attempting a diagnosis. The DSM-IV-TR states that if a phobic stimulus, whether it be an object or a social situation, is absent entirely in an environment — a diagnosis cannot be made. An example of this situation would be an individual who has a fear of mice (Suriphobia) but lives in an area devoid of mice. Even though the concept of mice causes marked distress and impairment within the individual, because the individual does not encounter mice in the environment no actual distress or impairment is ever experienced. Proximity and the degree to which escape from the phobic stimulus is impossible should also be considered. As the sufferer approaches a phobic stimulus, anxiety levels increase (e.g. as one gets closer to a snake, fear increases in ophidiophobia), and the degree to which escape of the phobic stimulus is limited has the effect of varying the intensity of fear in instances such as riding an elevator (e.g. anxiety increases at the midway point between floors and decreases when the floor is reached and the doors open).

The term phobia is encompassing and usually discussed in terms of specific phobias and social phobias. Specific phobias are nouns such as arachnophobia or acrophobia which are specific, and social phobias are phobias within social situations such as public speaking and crowded areas. Some phobias such as xenophobia overlap with many other phobias.

Clinical phobias
Most phobias are classified into three categories and, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV), such phobias are considered to be sub-types of anxiety disorder. The three categories are:

1. Social phobia: fear of other people or social situations such as performance anxiety or fears of embarrassment by scrutiny of others. Overcoming social phobia is often very difficult without the help of therapy or support groups. Social phobia may be further subdivided into
 * generalized social phobia (also known as social anxiety disorder or simply social anxiety).
 * specific social phobia, in which anxiety is triggered only in specific situations. The symptoms may extend to psychosomatic manifestation of physical problems. For example, sufferers of paruresis find it difficult or impossible to urinate in reduced levels of privacy. This goes far beyond mere preference: when the condition triggers, the person physically cannot empty their bladder.

2. Specific phobias: fear of a single specific panic trigger such as spiders, snakes, dogs, water, heights, flying, catching a specific illness, etc. Many people have these fears but to a lesser degree than those who suffer from specific phobias. People with the phobias specifically avoid the entity they fear.

3. Agoraphobia: a generalized fear of leaving home or a small familiar 'safe' area, and of possible panic attacks that might follow. It may also be caused by various specific phobias such as fear of open spaces, social embarrassment (social agoraphobia), fear of contamination (fear of germs, possibly complicated by obsessive-compulsive disorder) or PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) related to a trauma that occurred out of doors.

Phobias vary in severity among individuals. Some individuals can simply avoid the subject of their fear and suffer relatively mild anxiety over that fear. Others suffer full-fledged panic attacks with all the associated disabling symptoms. Most individuals understand that they are suffering from an irrational fear, but are powerless to override their panic reaction.

==Specific phobiasfically fear— the processing and respncidencening to fear something, not by a subject's own experience of fear, but by watching others reacting fearfully (observational learning). For instance, when a child sees a parent reacting fearfully to an animal, the child can become afraid of the animal as well.monstrated as effective in easing phobia symptoms following a specific trauma, such as a fear of dogs following a dog bite.== Antidepressant medications such SSRIs, MAOIs may be helpful in some cases of phobia. Benzodiazepines may be useful in acute treatment of severe symptoms but the risk benefit ratio is against their long-term use in phobic disorders.

There are also new pharmacological approaches, which target learning and memory processes that occur during psychotherapy. For example, it has been shown that glucocorticoids can enhance extinction-based psychotherapy.

Emotional Freedom Technique, a psychotherapeutic alternative medicine tool, also considered to be pseudoscience by the mainstream medicine, is allegedly useful.

Another method psychologists and psychiatrists use to treat patients with extreme phobias is prolonged exposure. Prolonged exposure is used in psychotherapy when the person with the phobia is exposed to the object of their fear over a long period of time. This technique is only tested when a person has overcome avoidance of or escape from the phobic object or situation. People with slight distress from their phobias usually do not need prolonged exposure to their fear.

For children and adolescents, one of the most effective treatments for specific phobias is participant modeling and reinforced practice. In this treatment method, the therapist models for the child how they should respond to their fears and then encourages the child to practice this behavior and reinforces their efforts.

These treatment options are not mutually exclusive. Often a therapist will suggest multiple treatments.

Hypnotherapy
Hypnotherapy may be used along with other therapies to improve common phobias such as agoraphobia, and social phobia, driving phobia, hospital phobia, needle phobia, dental phobia and vomiting phobia.

Hypnotherapy aims to get the individual into a relaxed state of mind, where the subconscious mind can be engaged. When using hypnosis, a dissociative technique is recommended which might include, for example, patients watching a younger version of themselves, watching a film or seeing a reflection. The therapist then enables patients to integrate the present with the past, traumatic experience so that they learn from the events and thus become stronger. Psychodynamic psychotherapy may be used at the beginning of each session to encourage the recall of stimuli. Hypnotherapy sessions may be done in groups as some patients may prefer sessions with others who are facing the same situation much like a support group. Overall, treatment is aimed at reducing the debilitating effects of phobias without the use of medication.

Non-psychological conditions
The word phobia may also signify conditions other than fear. For example, although the term hydrophobia means a fear of water, it may also mean inability to drink water due to an illness, or may be used to describe a chemical compound which repels water. It was also once used as a synonym for rabies, as an aversion to water is one of its symptoms. Likewise, the term photophobia may be used to define a physical complaint (i.e. aversion to light due to inflamed eyes or excessively dilated pupils) and does not necessarily indicate a fear of light.

Non-clinical uses of the term
It is possible for an individual to develop a phobia over virtually anything. The name of a phobia generally contains a Greek word for what the patient fears plus the suffix -phobia. Creating these terms is something of a word game. Few of these terms are found in medical literature. However, this does not necessarily make it a non-psychological condition.

Terms for prejudice
A number of terms with the suffix -phobia are used non-clinically. Such terms are primarily understood as negative attitudes towards certain categories of people or other things, used in an analogy with the medical usage of the term. Usually these kinds of "phobias" are described as fear, dislike, disapproval, prejudice, hatred, discrimination, or hostility towards the object of the "phobia". Often this attitude is based on prejudices and is a particular case of most xenophobia.

Below are some examples:
 * Biphobia - Negative attitudes and feelings towards bisexuality and bisexual people as a social group or as individuals.
 * Homophobia - Negative attitudes and feelings toward homosexuality or people who are identified or perceived as being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT).
 * Islamophobia - Negative attitudes and feelings towards Islam or Muslims, particularly radical Muslims
 * Transphobia - Negative attitudes and feelings towards transsexualism and transsexual or transgender people, based on the expression of their internal gender identity.
 * Xenophobia – fear or dislike of strangers or the unknown, sometimes used to describe nationalistic political beliefs and movements.