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Anxiety: Specific Phobias
 

Signs & Symptoms

If the situation or object can be easily avoided, no treatment is necessary. However, if there are no alternatives to the phobic situation (someone must get over their fear of airplane travel because they need to travel for business), the first line therapy is a form of behavioural therapy, exposure therapy, in which people are gradually desensitized to the feared situation or object.

In addition, a benzodiazepine such as lorazepam (Ativan) may also be useful, as can standard antidepressant medications including the SSRIs, the newer cyclic medications, RIMAs and the MAOIs.

In Canada, currently recommended treatments for specific phobias include: exposure therapy, lorazepam (Ativan), SSRIs, the newer cyclic medications, RIMAs and MAOIs.
 
Treatment

In contrast to GAD, a phobia is directed at something specific, either an object or a situation. A specific phobia does not necessarily disrupt a person's life to any appreciable extent unless the person suddenly has to confront the object or situation that triggers their anxiety on a more frequent basis. If someone has a spider phobia, for example, it's unlikely the phobia will be the source of much anxiety unless of course that person has to work or live in a place overrun with spiders! Specific phobias are common - about 10% of adults have experienced a phobia towards something and children are especially susceptible to animal phobias.

Phobic symptoms usually occur in the late teens or early 20s, but height phobias tend to begin in childhood, while the elderly can develop a morbid fear of falling for the first time in their senior years, often as a result of a previous fall resulting in injury. Among the more common objects or situations to which adults develop phobias are airplane travel, thunderstorms, heights, blood, needles, snakes and spiders.

Without treatment, phobias tend to persist into adulthood, spontaneously resolving in only about 20% of affected phobic people.

"Things are determined by the view taken of them."

- Monimus






Up to 3% of the population suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder, consisting of intrusive, unwanted thoughts, images or impulses (obsessions) on the one hand, and repetitive behaviours (compulsions) that generally reduce the distress and anxiety provoked by obsessions on the other.