The fear of crime refers to the fear of being a victim of crime as opposed to the actual probability of being a victim of crime.

The fear of crime, along with fear of the streets and the fear of youth, is said to have been in Western culture for "time immemorial". While fear of crime can be differentiated into public feelings, thoughts and behaviors about the personal risk of criminal victimization, distinctions can also be made between the tendency to see situations as fearful, the actual experience while in those situations, and broader expressions about the cultural and social significance of crime and symbols of crime in people's neighborhoods and in their daily, symbolic lives.

Importantly, feelings, thoughts and behaviors can have a number of functional and dysfunctional effects on individual and group life, depending on actual risk and people's subjective approaches to danger. On a negative side, they can erode public health and psychological well-being; they can alter routine activities and habits; they can contribute to some places turning into 'no-go' areas via a withdrawal from community; and they can drain community cohesion, trust and neighborhood stability. Some degree of emotional response can be healthy: psychologists have long highlighted the fact that some degree of worry can be a problem-solving activity, motivating care and precaution, underlining the distinction between low-level anxieties that motivate caution and counter-productive worries that damage well-being.

Factors influencing the fear of crime include the psychology of risk perception, circulating representations of the risk of victimization (chiefly via interpersonal communication and the mass media), public perceptions of neighborhood stability and breakdown, the influence of neighbourhood context, and broader factors where anxieties about crime express anxieties about the pace and direction of social change. There are also some wider cultural influences. For example, some have argued that modern times have left people especially sensitive to issues of safety and insecurity.

There is no universal cure for genophobia. Some ways of coping with or treating anxiety issues is to see a psychiatrist, psychologist, or licensed counselor for therapy. Some people experiencing pain during sex may visit their doctor or gynecologist. Medicine may also be prescribed to treat the anxiety brought on by the phobia.

Women's fear of crime refers to women's fear of being a victim of crime, independent of actual victimization. Although fear of crime is a concern for people of all genders, studies consistently find that women around the world tend to have much higher levels of fear of crime than men, despite the fact that in many places, and for most offenses, men's actual victimization rates are higher. Fear of crime is related to perceived risk of victimization, but is not the same; fear of crime may be generalized instead of referring to specific offenses, and perceived risk may also be considered a demographic factor that contributes to fear of crime. Women tend to have higher levels for both perceived risk and fear of crime.

In women's everyday lives, fear of crime can have negative effects, such as reducing their environmental mobility. Studies have shown that women tend to avoid certain behaviors, such as walking alone at night, because they are fearful of crime, and would feel more comfortable with these behaviors if they felt safer.

Ephebiphobia is the fear of youth. First coined as the "fear or loathing of teenagers", today the phenomenon is recognized as the "inaccurate, exaggerated and sensational characterization of young people" in a range of settings around the world. Studies of the fear of youth occur in sociology and youth studies.

There can be many different reasons for why people develop genophobia. Some of the main causes are former incidents of sexual assaults or abuse. These incidents violate the victim’s trust and take away their sense of right to self-determination. Another possible cause of genophobia is the feeling of intense shame or medical reasons. Others may have the fear without any diagnosable reason.

Media, marketers, politicians, youth workers and researchers have been implicated in perpetuating the fear of youth. Since young people in developed countries are expected to stay out of the workforce, any role for them outside that of consumer is potentially threatening to adults. Selling safety to parents and teachers has also been a driving force, as home security systems, cellphones, and computer surveillance usage is marketed to parents; and x-ray machines, metal detectors and closed-circuit television are increasingly sold to schools on the premise that young people are not to be trusted. These steps are in spite of the fact that experience consistently shows that monitoring youth does little to prevent violence or tragedy: the Columbine High School massacre occurred in a building with video surveillance and in-building police.

The very creation of the terms youth, adolescence and teenager have all been attributed to the fear of youth. As the western world became more industrialized, young people were increasingly driven from the workforce, including involuntary and voluntary positions, and into increasingly total institutions where they lost personal autonomy in favor of social control. Government policies outside of schools have been implicated as well, as over the last forty years curfews, anti-loitering and anti-cruising laws, and other legislation apparently targeted at teenagers have taken hold across the country. Courts have increasingly ruled against youth rights, as well. Before the 1940s "teenagers" were not listed in newspaper headlines, because as a group they did not exist. The impact of youth since World War II on western society has been immense, largely driven by marketing that proponents them as the "Other". In turn, youth are caused to behave in ways that appear different from adults. This has led to the phenomenon of youth, and in turn has created a perpetuated fear of them.

The word "pedophobia" comes from the Greek roots παιδ- "paid-" "child" and φόβος "-phóbos" "fear".

Discriminatory aspects of ageism have been strongly linked to gerontophobia. This irrational fear or hatred of the elderly is associated with the fact that someday all young people will grow old and that old age is associated with death. This unwillingness to accept death manifests in feelings of hostility and discriminatory acts towards the elderly. This source is irrelevant as it too has aged out of the scope of sociological bearing >

As with most phobias this fear could be cured with therapy. Relaxation techniques or support groups could also be effective.

Anxiety around mirrors and at all costs staying away from mirrors

The fear of children has been diagnosed and treated by psychiatrists, with studies examining the effects of multiple forms of treatment. Sociologists have situated "contemporary fears about children and childhood", e.g. paedophobia, as "contributing to the ongoing social construction of childhood", suggesting that "generational power relations, in which children's lives are bounded by adult surveillance" affect many aspects of society. More than one study has identified the fear of children as a factor affecting biological conception in humans.

Fear of surgery or other invasive medical procedure may be known as tomophobia. Fear of surgery is not a fear experienced often, but is still just as harmful as those that are more common. Since surgery is not a common occurrence, the fear is more based on inexperience or something that is out of the ordinary. This fear is one of those categorized under all fears of medical procedures that can be experienced by anyone, all ages, and have little need for actual psychological treatment, unless it is uncharacteristically causing the patient to react in a way that would be harmful to his or her health.

Gerontophobia is the fear of growing old, or a hatred or fear of the elderly. Many people have this phobia. The term comes from the Greek γέρων – "gerōn", "old man" and φόβος – "phobos", "fear".

There are several options for treatment of scopophobia. With one option, desensitization, the patient is stared at for a prolonged period and then describes their feelings. The hope is that the individual will either be desensitized to being stared at or will discover the root of their scopophobia.

Exposure therapy, another treatment commonly prescribed, has five steps:

- Evaluation

- Feedback

- Developing a fear hierarchy

- Exposure

- Building

In the evaluation stage, the scopophobic individual would describe their fear to the therapist and try to find out when and why this fear developed. The feedback stage is when the therapist offers a way of treating the phobia. A fear hierarchy is then developed, where the individual creates a list of scenarios involving their fear, with each one becoming worse and worse. Exposure involves the individual being exposed to the scenarios and situations in their fear hierarchy. Finally, building is when the patient, comfortable with one step, moves on to the next.

As with many human health problems support groups exist for scopophobic individuals. Being around other people who face the same issues can often create a more comfortable environment.

Other suggested treatments for scopophobia include hypnotherapy, neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), and energy psychology. In extreme cases of scopophobia, it is possible for the subject to be prescribed anti–anxiety medications. Medications may include benzodiazepines, antidepressants, or beta-blockers.

Fear of intimacy is generally a social phobia and anxiety disorder resulting in difficulty forming close relationships with another person. The term can also refer to a scale on a psychometric test, or a type of adult in attachment theory psychology.

The fear of intimacy is the fear of being emotionally and/or physically close to another individual. This fear is also defined as “the inhibited capacity of an individual, because of anxiety, to exchange thought and feelings of personal significance with another individual who is highly valued”. Fear of intimacy is the expression of existential views in that to love and to be loved makes life seem precious and death more inevitable. It often results from past traumas such as rape or childhood sexual abuse. Fear of intimacy is also related to the fear of being touched .

Psychonalysts, starting from Freud himself, associated sensations towards travel by train with sexuality. In 1906 Freud wrote that the link of railway travel and sexuality derives from the pleasurable sensation of shaking during the travel. Therefore, in the event of repression of sexuality the person will experience anxiety when confronted with railway travel. Karl Abraham interpreted the fear of the uncontrollable motion of a train as a projection of the fear of uncontrolled sexuality. Wilhelm Stekel (1908) also associated train phobia with rocking sensation, but in addition to libido repression, he associated it with the embarrassment with the reminiscences of the rocking sensation of the early childhood.

The most common methods for the treatment of specific phobias are systematic desensitization and in vivo or exposure therapy.

Exposure therapy has been proven as an effective treatment for people who have a fear of bees. It is recommended that people place themselves in a comfortable open environment, such as a park or garden, and gradually over a prolonged period of time move closer to the bees. This process should not be rushed, it may take many months spent watching bees before people feel comfortable in their presence.

Apiphobia is one of the zoophobias prevalent in young children and may prevent them from taking part in any outdoor activities. Older people control the natural fear of bees more easily. However, some adults face hardships of controlling the fear of bees.

A recommended way of overcoming child's fear of bees is training to face fears (a common approach for treating specific phobias). Programs vary.

The fear of spiders can be treated by any of the general techniques suggested for specific phobias. The first line of treatment is systematic desensitization – also known as exposure therapy – which was first described by South African psychiatrist Joseph Wolpe. Before engaging in systematic desensitization it is common to train the individual with arachnophobia in relaxation techniques, which will help keep the patient calm. Systematic desensitization can be done in vivo (with live spiders) or by getting the individual to imagine situations involving spiders, then modelling interaction with spiders for the person affected and eventually interacting with real spiders. This technique can be effective in just one session.

Recent advances in technology have enabled the use of virtual or augmented reality spiders for use in therapy. These techniques have proven to be effective.

Like many other phobias, lilapsophobia can often be treated using cognitive-behavioral therapy, but if it stems from post-traumatic stress disorder, then alternative therapy may be more recommended.

Ergophobia or ergasiophobia is an abnormal and persistent fear of (manual labor, non-manual labour, etc.) or finding employment. Ergophobia may also be a subset of either social phobia or performance anxiety. Sufferers of ergophobia experience undue anxiety about the workplace environment even though they realize their fear is irrational. Their fear may actually be a combination of fears, such as fear of failing at assigned tasks, speaking before groups at work (both of which are types of performance anxiety), socializing with co-workers (a type of social phobia), and other fears of emotional, psychological and/or physiological injuries.

The term "ergophobia" comes from the Greek "ergon" (work) and "phobos" (fear).

Most people suffer from a form of fear of medical procedures during their life. There are many different aspects of this fear and not everyone has every part. Some of these parts include fear of surgery, fear of dental work and fear of doctors (involving fear of needles). These fears are often overlooked, but when a patient has one to the extreme it can be very damaging to their health.

Formally, medical fear is defined (by Steward and Steward, see Further reading) as "any experience that involves medical personnel or

procedures involved in the process of evaluating or modifying health status in traditional health care settings".

Freud himself was suffering a kind of train anxiety, as he confessed in a number of letters. He used the term ""Reisenangst"" for it, which literally means "fear of travel" but it was recognized it was primarily associated with the travel by train, and some translators translated Freud's ""Reisenangst"" as "railroad phobia" However Freud's anxiety was not a "true " phobia.

Regardless of sexuality, since early days various authors associated the uncontrollable motion of the train with the fear of derailment, of a catastrophe.

Another source of fear in the early days of railway travel was travellers' isolation from the outside world, as well as the confinement in a small compartment, rendering a person who became sick or subject to crime, helpless. ""...The loudest screams are swallowed up by the roar of the rapidly revolving wheels..."". This kind of fear, as well as actual crimes committed in trains, were often a matter of newspaper publications of the times. After a number of prominent cases this fear was elevated to the level of collective psychosis. Public fear about rail travel was heightened after British surgeon John Eric Erichsen described a post-traumatic diagnosis known as railway spine or "Erichsen's disease". People diagnosed with this had no obvious injury and were rejected as fake. Nowadays it is known that traffic accidents may cause posttraumatic stress disorder.

Islamophobia in Sweden refers to the set of discourses, behaviours and structures which express feelings of anxiety, fear, hostility and rejection towards Islam and/or Muslims in Sweden. Historically, attitudes towards Muslims in Sweden have been mixed with relations being largely negative in the early 16th century, improving in the 18th century, and declining once again with the rise of Swedish nationalism in the early 20th century. According to Jonas Otterbeck, a Swedish historian of religion, attitudes towards Islam and Muslims today have improved but "the level of prejudice was and is still high." Islamophobia can manifest itself through discrimination in the workforce, prejudiced coverage in the media, and violence against Muslims.

Many treatment options are available for those suffering from it. Cognitive behavioral therapy is one form of therapy for people who suffer from certain phobias. It focuses on one's fears and the reason they exist. It tries to change and challenge the thought processes behind one's fear. Studies have shown that it has been effective in treating people with equinophobia. Another treatment option is systematic desensitization, which focuses on gradually acclimating patients to their phobias. The first step in this process may involve thinking about horses, followed by looking at pictures of horses. Once the patient is comfortable with the images, they may proceed to meeting a horse, touching a horse, and finally riding a horse. For extreme cases, it may also be necessary to use medication, even though its effects are only short term.