Phobia

A phobia (from the Greek φόβος "fear"), is a strong, persistent fear of situations, objects, activities, or persons. The main symptom of this disorder is the excessive, unreasonable desire to avoid the feared subject. When the fear is beyond one's control, or if the fear is interfering with daily life, then a diagnosis under one of the anxiety disorders can be made.

Phobias (in the clinical meaning of the term) are the most common form of anxiety disorders. An American study by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) found that between 8.7% and 18.1% of Americans suffer from phobias. Broken down by age and gender, the study found that phobias were the most common mental illness among women in all age groups and the second most common illness among men older than 25.

Phobia is also used in a non-medical sense for aversions of all sorts. These terms are usually constructed with the suffix -phobia. A number of these terms describe negative attitudes or prejudices towards the named subjects. See Non-clinical uses of the term below.

Understanding and classifying phobias
Most psychologists and psychiatrists divide phobias into three categories:

A specific phobia is a generic term for a kind of anxiety disorders that amount to unreasonable or irrational fear or anxiety related with exposure to specific objects or situations. As a result, the affected persons tend to actively avoid these objects or situations.
 * Social phobias - fears involving other people or social situations such as performance anxiety or fears of embarrassment by scrutiny of others, eg. eating in public.
 * Specific phobias - fear of a single specific panic trigger such as spiders, dogs, elevators, flying, catching a specific illness, etc.

The DSM-IV distinguishes the following groups of specific phobias (classification may overlap).
 * Animal type (e.g. arachnophobia, or fear of spiders)
 * Natural environment type (e.g. acrophobia, or fear of heights; fear of storms or lighnings)
 * Situational type (e.g. claustrophobia, or fear of small confined spaces; fear of elevators, of crossing a road)
 * Blood/injection/injury type (e.g. aichmophobia, or fear of injections and needles)
 * Other

The fear or anxiety may be triggered both by presence and the anticipation of the specific object/situation and usually causes a panic attack. In most cases of adults, this kind of phobia is consciously recognized by the person; still, anxiety and avoidance are difficult to control and may significantly impair person's functioning and even physical health (notably in the case of aichmophobia).

Treatment
Some therapists use virtual reality or imagery exercise to desensitize patients to the feared thing. These are parts of systematic desensitization therapy.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can be beneficial. Cognitive behavioral therapy let the patient understand the cycle of negative thought patterns, and ways to change these thought patterns. CBT may be conducted in a group setting. Gradual desensitization treatment and CBT are often successful, provided the patient is willing to endure some discomfort and to make a continuous effort over a long period of time.

Anti-anxiety or anti-depression medications can be of assistance in some cases. Benzodiazepines could be proscribed for short term use.

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

Non-clinical uses of the term
A number of neologisms have appeared with the suffix -phobia, in which "phobia" is understood as a negative attitude 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 general xenophobia.

A fear or hatred is not always considered a phobia in the clinical sense because it is believed to be only a symptom of other psychological problems, or the result of ignorance, or of political or social beliefs. In other words, unlike clinical phobias, which are usually qualified with the word "irrational", phobias of attitude usually have roots in social relations.

Below are some of these neologisms:


 * Christianophobia, fear or dislike of Christians
 * Homophobia, fear or dislike of homosexual people
 * Transphobia, fear or dislike of transgender or transsexual people.
 * Xenophobia, fear or dislike of strangers or the unknown, often used to describe nationalistic political beliefs and movements
 * Ephebophobia, irrational fear of adolescents gaining more rights or showing behavioral, emotional or social emancipation

See also List of anti-ethnic and anti-national terms.

Hydrophobia and photophobia
The term hydrophobia, or fear of water, is usually not a psychological condition at all, but another term for the disease rabies, referring to a common symptom. Likewise, photophobia is a physical complaint. Aversion to light due to inflamed eyes or excessively dilated pupils does not necessarily indicate photophobia.