Phobia is derived the Greek word, Phobos which means fear. It is an intense, irrational, persistent fear of some situations, activities, objects or persons. The major symptom of this type of disorder is the inordinate and absurd desire to avoid the subject you are afraid of. When the fear is out of one's control or it is creating disturbances in the daily life, then a diagnosis under one of the anxiety disorders is a must to be made immediately, otherwise it may cause various other problems. Phobia is one of the most common anxiety disorders. An American study conducted by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) ascertained that 8.7% to 18.1% of Americans suffer from various types of phobias. Broken down by gender and age, the study observed that phobias were among the common mental illnesses among women of all age groups and were the second most common illnesses among men who are older than 25 years.
Phobia generally arises from a combination of internal predispositions and external events. In a notable experiment, Martin Seligman applied classical conditioning to show phobias of flowers and snakes.
The results of this experiment depicted that it dealt with fewer shocks to create a contrary response to a picture of a snake rather to the picture of a flower, which leads to the conclusion that some objects may have a genetic sensitivity to being linked with fear. Many particular phobias can be identified back to a particular triggering event, generally a traumatic experience at a tender age. Agoraphobia and Social phobias have more complicated causes which are not totally known at this time. It is believed that genetics, heredity and brain chemistry combine with the life-experiences to play a vital role in the development of various types of anxiety disorders and phobias.
The term, Phobia can also be used in non-medical senses for expressing a feeling of dislike for various things. These terms are generally formed with the suffix as phobia. A number of these terms describe negative attitudes or prejudices towards the named subjects. Phobias are often linked to the amygdala, which is an area of the brain situated in the limbic system behind the pituitary gland. The amygdala releases hormones which helps in controlling aggression and fear, and assists in interpreting emotion in the facial looks or expressions of others. When the aggressive or fearing response is started, the amygdala secretes hormones into the body to move the entire human body into a state of alertness so that the body is ready to run, move, fight, etc.
Research studies have noticed a difference between the response cycles of those facing a dangerous object that does not initiate phobia-like responses and those facing an object of a phobia. In one of the cases, patients suffering from arachnophobia were shown pictures of a snake and spider. When the picture is flashed up, the arachnophobe reacted with brief fear to the snake, but the amygdala immediately shut down when the logical areas of deeper thought examined the terror and ruled it out as unimportant. But, the picture of spider when shown to the arachnophobe, its amygdala reacted, and then it did not stop secreting hormones, even long after they had pacified the situation they were in previously.
To know more about Phobia click on the following link:
Phobia List
|
