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
Radiation, most commonly in the form of X-rays, is used frequently in society in order to produce positive outcomes. The primary use of radiation in healthcare is in the use of radiography for radiographic examination or procedure, and in the use of radiotherapy in the treatment of cancerous conditions. Radiophobia can be a fear which patients experience before and after either of these procedures, it is therefore the responsibility of the healthcare professional at the time, often a Radiographer or Radiation Therapist, to reassure the patients about the stochastic and deterministic effects of radiation on human physiology. Advising patients and other irradiated persons of the various radiation protection measures that are enforced, including the use of lead-rubber aprons, dosimetry and Automatic Exposure Control (AEC) is a common method of informing and reassuring radiophobia sufferers.
Similarly, in industrial radiography there is the possibility of persons to experience radiophobia when radiophobia sufferers are near industrial radiographic equipment.
Fear of bats, sometimes called chiroptophobia (from the Greek χείρ - "cheir", "hand" and πτερόν - "pteron", "wing" referring to the order of the bats, and φόβος - "phobos", meaning "fear"), is a specific phobia associated with bats and to common negative stereotypes and fear of bats.
A specific fear of clowns has sometimes been discussed in terms of a specific phobia. The term "" is a neologism coined in the context of informal ""-phobia" lists".
The term is not listed in the World Health Organisation's ICD-10 nor in the American Psychiatric Association's DSM-5 categorization of disorders.
Fear of being buried alive is the fear of being placed in a grave while still alive as a result of being incorrectly pronounced dead. The abnormal, psychopathological version of this fear is referred to as taphophobia (from Greek τάφος - "taphos", "grave, tomb" and φόβος - "phobos", "fear"), which is translated as "fear of graves".
Before the advent of modern medicine, the fear was not entirely irrational. Throughout history, there have been numerous cases of people being buried alive by accident. In 1905, the English reformer William Tebb collected accounts of premature burial. He found 219 cases of near live burial, 149 actual live burials, 10 cases of live dissection and 2 cases of awakening while being embalmed.
The 18th century had seen the development of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and crude defibrillation techniques to revive persons considered dead, and the Royal Humane Society had been formed as the Society for the Recovery of Persons Apparently Drowned. In 1896, an American funeral director, T. M. Montgomery, reported that "nearly 2% of those exhumed were no doubt victims of suspended animation", although folklorist Paul Barber has argued that the incidence of burial alive has been overestimated, and that the normal effects of decomposition are mistaken for signs of life.
There have been many urban legends of people being accidentally buried alive. Legends included elements such as someone entering into the state of sopor or coma, only to wake up years later and die a horrible death. Other legends tell of coffins opened to find a corpse with a long beard or corpses with the hands raised and palms turned upward. Of note is a legend about the premature burial of Ann Hill Carter Lee, the wife of Henry Lee III. On his deathbed in 1799, George Washington made his attendants promise not to bury him for two days.
Literature found fertile ground in exploring the natural fear of being buried alive. One of Edgar Allan Poe's horror stories, "The Premature Burial", is about a person suffering from taphophobia. Other Poe stories about premature burial are "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "The Cask of Amontillado"—and to a lesser extent, “The Black Cat”.
Fear of being buried alive was elaborated to the extent that those who could afford it would make all sorts of arrangements for the construction of a safety coffin to ensure this would be avoided (e.g., glass lids for observation, ropes to bells for signaling, and breathing pipes for survival until rescued).
An urban legend states that the sayings "Saved by the bell" and "Dead ringer" are both derived from the notion of having a rope attached to a bell outside the coffin that could alert people that the recently buried person is not yet deceased; these theories have been proven a hoax.
Like astraphobia, lilapsophobia is a common fear for children, although less common. Because children are just learning to distinguish between fantasy and reality, major storm broadcasts on television or discussion by parents can cause fear that the storm is coming with a tornadic potential or a hurricane.
Because fear is a part of normal child development, this phobia is not diagnosed unless if persisted for more than six months. Parents should conquer the child's fear by telling them how rare the major storms that hit hometown area are.
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.
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.
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.
Radiophobia is an obsessive fear of ionizing radiation, in particular, fear of X-rays. While in some cases radiation may be harmful (i.e. radiation-induced cancer, and acute radiation syndrome), the effects of poor information, understanding, or a traumatic experience may cause unnecessary or even irrational fear. The term is also used in a non-medical sense to describe the opposition to the use of nuclear technology (i.e. nuclear power) arising from concerns disproportionately greater than actual risks would merit.
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.
Contrary to a widespread misconception, only 3 species of bats feed on blood, and these species only live in Latin America. Common ignorance often leads to misidentification.
At the same time, the fear of bats may be naturally reinforced by the natural startle response experienced by an unsuspecting person, e.g., when a disturbed colony of bats dashes out of a cave. In fact, the majority of bats, specifically the microbats which make up the majority of species, are terrified of humans and see man as a potential predator; bats disturbed in their roost instinctively flee as fast as they can, with maternity colonies sometimes abandoning their babies since they are desperate to escape.
Often, people fear bats due to the possibility of contracting rabies, but only 0.5% of vampire bats carry rabies.
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 fear of ghosts in many human cultures is based on beliefs that some ghosts may be malevolent towards people and dangerous (within the range of all possible attitudes, including mischievous, benign, indifferent, etc.). It is related to fear of the dark.
The fear of ghosts is sometimes referred to as phasmophobia and erroneously spectrophobia, the latter being an established term for fear of mirrors and one's own reflections.
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.
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.
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 >
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.
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.
As with most phobias this fear could be cured with therapy. Relaxation techniques or support groups could also be effective.
The word "pedophobia" comes from the Greek roots παιδ- "paid-" "child" and φόβος "-phóbos" "fear".
Equinophobia or hippophobia is a psychological fear of horses. "Equinophobia" is derived from the Greek word φόβος ("phóbos"), meaning "fear" and the Latin word "equus", meaning "horse". The term "hippophobia" is also derived from the Greek word "phóbos" with the prefix derived from the Greek word for horse, ἵππος ("híppos").
An example of the phobia can be found in Freud's psychoanalytic study of Little Hans.
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.
Digital phobic is an informal phrase used to describe a reluctance to become fully immersed in the digital age for being fearful of how it might negatively change or alter everyday life.
The fast-paced development of the digital world in the twenty-first century has contributed to the digital divide becoming a very real problem for a segment of the population for whom a lack of education of, interest in, or access to digital devices has left them excluded from the technological world and fearful of its growing omnipresence.
Digital phobic is part of a growing dictionary of digital vocabulary exploring the social impact of the technological age. The phrase considers the fears associated with technological evolution and change, and acknowledges the possibility of exclusion as a result of a rising reliance on technology in day-to-day life.
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".
The fear of trains is anxiety and fear associated with trains, railways, and railway travel.