Fears And Phobias A Brief Overview

Psychiatry identifies three different categories of phobia:
Agoraphobia is a fear of open spaces It is also a fear of having a panic attack in a public place, of losing control in an area from which escape may prove difficult or embarrassing
Social Phobia is an irrational anxiety brought forth by exposure to certain social situations, leading to avoidance behaviour
Specific Phobia is a persistent and irrational fear in response to some specific stimulus, which commonly results in avoidance of/withdrawal from that stimulus It could be triggered by an insect or animal (zoophobia), by a situation like being trapped in an enclosed space (claustrophobia) or it could be a fear of disease (pathophobia)
Approximately 1 in 23 people suffer from phobias ThatÂ’s nearly 425% of the population There are roughly 115 million sufferers in the US and 25 million in the UK
Approximately 191 million American adults aged between 18 and 54 (133% of people in this age group) in a given year have an anxiety disorder
52 million Americans (aged 18 to 54) or 37% of people in this age group have social phobia
Approximately 32 million Americans have agoraphobia
Almost 62 million US citizens have some sort of specific phobia
All three types of phobia, social, agoraphobia and specific are likely to effect between 5 and 10 people in every 100
Females are more prone to irrational fears than males Roughly twice as many women as men suffer from panic disorder, post traumatic stress disorder, generalised anxiety disorder and specific phobia though about equal numbers of women and men have obsessive-compulsive disorder and social phobia
In England in 2002-3, there were 310 hospital consultant episodes for phobic anxiety disorders 94% required hospital admission 40% were for men, 60% for women
Only about 20% of specific phobias disappear on their own for an adult

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