by Melissa Washburn

Created on: May 09, 2010

Introduction:

A Phobia is an intense and persistent fear of certain situations, activities, things, animals, or people. The main symptom of this disorder is the excessive and unreasonable desire to avoid the feared stimulus. A Phobia can caused by what are called, neutral, unconditioned, and conditioned stimuli, which can trigger either conditioned or unconditioned responses. For example, if a child is attacked by a dog, the dog being the unconditioned stimuli, the child would respond with an unconditioned response. When this happens, the unconditioned stimulus of them being attacked by the dog would become conditioned, and to this conditioned stimulus, a conditioned response would develop. If the occurrence had enough of an impact on the child then they would develop a fear of that dog, or in some cases, an irrational fear of all dogs in general. Phobias are the most common form of anxiety disorders, and an American study by the National Institute of Mental Health, found that between 8.7% and 18.1% of people suffer from phobias. Broken down by gender and age, 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. Phobias are not generally diagnosed if they don’t effect the everyday life of the person, but if a phobia is defined as "impairing to the individual", then it will be treated after being measured in context by the degree of severity. A large percent of the American population is afraid of public speaking, which could range from mildly uncomfortably, to an intense anxiety that inhibits all social involvement.

Body:

Phobias are known as an emotional response learned because of difficult life experiences. Generally phobias occur when fear produced by a threatening situation is transmitted to other similar situations, while the original fear is often repressed or forgotten. The excessive, unreasoning fear of water, for example, may be based on a childhood experience of almost drowning. The individual attempts to avoid that situation in the future, a response that, while reducing anxiety in the short term, reinforces the association of the situation with the onset of anxiety.

Psychologists classify most phobias into three categories and, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; such phobias are considered to be the sub-types of anxiety disorder.   The three categories are social phobias, specific phobias

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