Made by DATEXIS (Data Science and Text-based Information Systems) at Beuth University of Applied Sciences Berlin
Deep Learning Technology: Sebastian Arnold, Betty van Aken, Paul Grundmann, Felix A. Gers and Alexander Löser. Learning Contextualized Document Representations for Healthcare Answer Retrieval. The Web Conference 2020 (WWW'20)
Funded by The Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy; Grant: 01MD19013D, Smart-MD Project, Digital Technologies
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.
Individuals with scopophobia generally exhibit symptoms in social situations when attention is brought upon them like public speaking. Several other triggers exist to cause social anxiety. Some examples include: Being introduced to new people, being teased and/or criticized, embarrassing easily, and even answering a cell phone call in public.
Often scopophobia will result in symptoms common with other anxiety disorders. The symptoms of scopophobia include an irrational feelings of panic, feelings of terror, feelings of dread, rapid heartbeat, shortness of breath, nausea, dry mouth, trembling, anxiety and avoidance. Other symptoms related to scopophobia may be hyperventilation, muscle tension, dizziness, uncontrollable shaking or trembling, excessive eye watering and redness of the eyes.