"Vertigo" is often used (incorrectly) to describe a fear of heights, but it is more accurately a spinning sensation that occurs when one is not actually spinning. It can be triggered by looking down from a high place, or by looking straight up at a high place or tall object, but this alone does not describe vertigo. True vertigo can be triggered by almost any type of movement (e.g. standing up, sitting down, walking) or change in visual perspective (e.g. squatting down, walking up or down stairs, looking out of the window of a moving car or train). Vertigo is called "height vertigo" when the sensation of vertigo is triggered by heights.

There have been a number of studies into using virtual reality therapy for acrophobia.

Many different types of medications are used in the treatment of phobias like fear of heights, including traditional anti-anxiety drugs such as benzodiazepines, and newer options like antidepressants and beta-blockers.

The fear of flying may be created by various other phobias and fears:

- Fear of crashing, which in rare cases will cause death, is the most common reason for the fear of flying.

- Fear of closed in spaces (claustrophobia), such as that of an aircraft cabin

- Fear of heights (hypsophobia)

- Feeling of not being in control

- Fear of vomiting, where a person will be afraid that they'll have motion sickness on board, or encounter someone having motion sickness and have no control over it (such as escaping it)

- Fear of having panic attacks in certain places, where escape would be difficult and/or embarrassing (agoraphobia)

- Fear of hijacking or terrorism

Main features of diagnostic criteria for specific phobia in the DSM-IV-TR:

- Marked and persistent fear that is excessive or unreasonable, cued by the presence or anticipation of a specific object or situation (e.g., flying, heights, animals, receiving an injection, seeing blood).

- Exposure to the phobic stimulus almost invariably provokes an immediate anxiety response, which may take the form of a situationally bound or situationally predisposed panic attack. In children, the anxiety may be expressed by crying, tantrums, freezing, or clinging.

- The person recognizes that the fear is excessive or unreasonable. In children, this feature may be absent.

- The phobic situation(s) is avoided or else is endured with intense anxiety or distress.

Specific Phobia – DSM 5 Criteria

- Fear or anxiety about a specific object or situation (In children fear/anxiety can be expressed by crying, tantrums, freezing, or clinging)

- The phobic object or situation almost always provokes immediate fear or anxiety

- The phobic object or situation is avoided or endured with intense fear or anxiety

- The fear or anxiety is out of proportion to the actual danger posed by the specific object or situation and to the sociocultural context

- The fear, anxiety, or avoidance is persistent, typically lasting for 6 months or more

- The fear, anxiety, or avoidance causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning

- The disturbance is not better explained by symptoms of another mental disorder, including fear, anxiety, and avoidance of situations associated with panic-like symptoms or other incapacitating symptoms; objects or situations related to obsessions; reminders of traumatic events; separation from home or attachment figures; or social situations

According to the fourth revision of the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders", phobias can be classified under the following general categories:

- Animal type – Fear of dogs, cats, rats and/or mice, pigs, cows, birds, spiders, or snakes.

- Natural environment type – Fear of water (aquaphobia), heights (acrophobia), lightning and thunderstorms (astraphobia), or aging (gerascophobia).

- Situational type – Fear of small confined spaces (claustrophobia), or the dark (nyctophobia).

- Blood/injection/injury type – this includes fear of medical procedures, including needles and injections (trypanophobia), fear of blood (hemophobia) and fear of getting injured.

- Other – children's fears of loud sounds or costumed characters.

Flight experience with the use of anti-anxiety medications like benzodiazepines or other relaxant/depressant drugs varies from person to person. Medication decreases the person's reflective function. Though this may reduce anxiety caused by inner conflict, reduced reflective function can cause the anxious flier to believe what they are afraid will happen is actually happening.

A double-blind clinical study at the Stanford University School of Medicine suggests that anti-anxiety medication can keep a person from becoming accustomed to flight. In the research, two flights were conducted. In the first flight, though patients given alprazolam (Xanax) reported less anxiety than those receiving a placebo, their measurable stress increased. The heart rate in the alprazolam group was 114 versus 105 beats per minute in the placebo group. Those who received alprazolam also had increased respiration rates (22.7 vs 18.3 breaths/min).

On the second flight, no medication was given. Seventy-one percent of those who received alprazolam on the first flight experienced panic as compared with only 29% of those who received a placebo on the first flight. This suggests that the participants who were not medicated on the first flight benefited from the experience via some degree of desensitization.

Typical pharmacologic therapy is 0.5 or 1.0 mg of alprazolam about an hour before every flight, with an additional 0.5-1.0 mg if anxiety remains high during the flight. The alternative is to advise patients not to take medication, but encourage them to fly without it, instructing them in the principles of self-exposure.

Phobias are a common form of anxiety disorders and distributions are heterogeneous by age and gender. An American study by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) found that between 8.7 percent and 18.1 percent of Americans suffer from phobias, making it the most common mental illness among women in all age groups and the second most common illness among men older than 25. Between 4 percent and 10 percent of all children experience specific phobias during their lives, and social phobias occur in one percent to three percent of children and adolescents.

A Swedish study found that females have a higher incidence than males (26.5 percent for females and 12.4 percent for males). Among adults, 21.2 percent of women and 10.9 percent of men have a single specific phobia, while multiple phobias occur in 5.4 percent of females and 1.5 percent of males. Women are nearly four times as likely as men to have a fear of animals (12.1 percent in women and 3.3 percent in men) — a higher dimorphic than with all specific or generalized phobias or social phobias. Social phobias are more common in girls than in boys, while situational phobia occurs in 17.4 percent of women and 8.5 percent of men.

The terms "distress" and "impairment" as defined by the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition" (DSM-IV-TR) should also take into account the context of the person's environment if attempting a diagnosis. The DSM-IV-TR states that if a feared stimulus, whether it be an object or a social situation, is absent entirely in an environment, a diagnosis cannot be made. An example of this situation would be an individual who has a fear of mice but lives in an area devoid of mice. Even though the concept of mice causes marked distress and impairment within the individual, because the individual does not usually encounter mice, no actual distress or impairment is ever experienced. Proximity to, and ability to escape from, the stimulus should also be considered. As the phobic person approaches a feared stimulus, anxiety levels increase, and the degree to which the person perceives they might escape from the stimulus affects the intensity of fear in instances such as riding an elevator (e.g. anxiety increases at the midway point between floors and decreases when the floor is reached and the doors open).

Gephyrophobia is the anxiety disorder or specific phobia characterized by the fear of bridges. As a result, sufferers of gephyrophobia may avoid routes that will take them over bridges.

Some possible explanations of gephyrophobia may be the fear of driving off the bridge, the fear of a gust of wind taking one off the bridge, a fear of the structural integrity of the bridges itself, or the fear that the bridge will collapse if they try to cross it. The fear overlaps with acrophobia, the fear of heights, as gephyrophobia tends to be exacerbated in tall bridges vs. ones close to the water/ground beneath.

Dr. Michael Liebowitz, founder of the Anxiety Disorders Clinic at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, says, "It's not an isolated phobia, but usually part of a larger constellation ... It's people who get panic attacks. You get light-headed, dizzy; your heart races. You become afraid that you'll feel trapped." It is a situational phobia.

The New York State Thruway Authority will lead gephyrophobiacs over the Tappan Zee Bridge. A driver can call the authority in advance and arrange for someone to drive the car over the bridge for them. The authority performs the service about six times a year.

The Maryland Transportation Authority offers a similar service for crossing the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.

The Mackinac Bridge Authority, which oversees the Mackinac Bridge, which connects Michigan’s Upper and Lower peninsulas, will drive one's car across its span for any needy gephyrophobiacs. Some thousand drivers take advantage of this free program each year. Leslie Ann Pluhar had her Yugo blown off that bridge. Later investigation showed the driver had stopped her car over the open steel grating on the bridge's span and that a gust of wind through the grating blew her vehicle off the bridge, although this is not supported by recorded wind speed measurements taken on and around the bridge at the time of the accident.

The term "gephyrophobia" comes from Greek γέφυρα ("gephura") meaning "bridge" and φόβος ("phobos") "fear".

Studies done by psychologists Eleanor J. Gibson and Richard D. Walk have further explained the nature of this fear. One of their more famous studies is the "visual cliff. Below is their description of the cliff:

Thirty-six infants were tested in their experiments, ranging from six to fourteen months. Gibson and Walk found that when placed on the board, 27 of the infants would crawl on the shallow side when called by their mothers; only three ventured off the "edge" of the cliff. Many infants would crawl away from their mothers who were calling from the deep end, and some would cry because they couldn’t reach their mothers without crossing an apparent chasm. Some would pat the glass on the deep end, but even with this assurance would not crawl on the glass. These results, although unable to prove that this fear is innate, indicate that most human infants have well developed depth perception and are able to make the connection between depth and the danger that accompanies falling.

For a long time, the fear of falling was merely believed to be a result of the psychological trauma of a fall, also called "post-fall syndrome". This syndrome was first mentioned in 1982 by Murphy and Isaacs, who noticed that after a fall, ambulatory persons developed intense fear and walking disorders. Fear of falling has been identified as one of the key symptoms of this syndrome. Since that time, FOF has gained recognition as a specific health problem among older adults. However, FOF was also commonly found among elderly persons who had not yet experienced a fall.

Prevalence of FOF appears to increase with age and to be higher in women. Age remains significant in multiple logistic regression analyses. The results of different studies have reported gender as a somewhat significant risk factor for fear of falling. Other risk factors of fear of falling in the elderly include dizziness, self-rated health status, depression, and problems with gait and balance.

Gephyrophobia is the name of a map in the video game ""; the two bases are connected only by a bridge flanked by snipers' outposts. The name most likely comes from the fact that the players are frequently killed on the bridge.