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As with most phobias this fear could be cured with therapy. Relaxation techniques or support groups could also be effective.
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.
Fear of fish or ichthyophobia ranges from cultural phenomena such as fear of eating fish, fear of touching raw fish, or fear of dead fish, up to irrational fear (specific phobia). Galeophobia is the fear specifically of sharks.
Ichthyophobia is described in "Psychology: An International Perspective" as an "unusual" specific phobia. Both symptoms and remedies of ichthyophobia are common to most specific phobias.
John B. Watson, a renowned name of behaviorism, describes an example, quoted in many books in psychology, of conditioned fear of a goldfish in an infant and a way of unconditioning of the fear by what is called now graduated exposure therapy:
In contrast, radical exposure therapy was used successfully to cure a man with a "life affecting" fish phobia on the 2007 documentary series, "The Panic Room".
Anxiety around mirrors and at all costs staying away from mirrors
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
As is common with specific phobias, an occasional fright may give rise to abnormal anxiety that requires treatment. An abnormal fear of bats may be treated by any standard treatment for specific phobias. Due to the fact that the fear is not life altering, it can usually just be left untreated.
Myrmecophobia is the inexplicable fear of ants. It is a type of specific phobia. It is common for those who suffer from myrmecophobia to also have a wider fear of insects in general. Such a condition is known as entomophobia. This fear can manifest itself in several ways, such as a fear of ants contaminating a person's food supply, or fear of a home invasion by large numbers of ants.
The term "myrmecophobia" comes from the Greek , "myrmex", meaning "ant" and , "phóbos", "fear".
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.
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.
According to Child and Adolescent Mental Health, approximately 5 percent of children suffer from specific phobias and 15 percent seek treatment for anxiety-related problems. In recent years the number of children with clinically diagnosed phobias has gradually increased. Researchers are finding that the majority of these diagnoses come anxiety related phobias or society phobias.
Specific phobias are more prevalent in girls than in boys. Likewise, specific phobias are also more prevalent in older children than younger.
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.
Fear of bees (or of bee stings), technically known as melissophobia (from , "melissa", "honey bee" + , "phobos", "fear") and occasionally misspelled as melissaphobia and also known as apiphobia (from Latin "apis" for "honey bee" + "", "phobos", "fear"), is one of the common fears among people and is a kind of specific phobia.
Most people have been stung by a bee or had friends or family members stung. A child may fall victim by treading on a bee while playing outside. The sting can be quite painful and in some individuals results in swelling which may last for several days, and can also provoke allergic reactions such as anaphylaxis, so the development of loathsome fear of bees is quite natural.
Ordinary (non-phobic) fear of bees in adults is generally associated with lack of knowledge. The general public is not aware that bees attack in defense of their hive, or when accidentally squashed, and an occasional bee in a field presents no danger. Moreover, the majority of insect stings in the United States are attributed to yellowjacket wasps, which are often mistaken for a honeybee.
Unreasonable fear of bees in humans may also have a detrimental effect on ecology. Bees are important pollinators, and when, in their fear, people destroy wild colonies of bees, they contribute to environmental damage and may also be the cause of the disappearing bees.
The renting of bee colonies for pollination of crops is the primary source of income for beekeepers in the US, but as the fears of bees spread, it becomes hard to find a location for the colonies because of the growing objections of local population.
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.
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.
The most common treatment for serious cases is behavior therapy—specifically, systematic desensitization.
Several other self-help treatments exist, mainly involving exposure therapy and relaxation techniques while driving. Additional driving training and practice with a certified teacher also help many to become more confident and less likely to suffer from anxiety.
One of the emerging methods of treating this fear is through the use of virtual therapy.
With repeated exposure, all of the subjects displayed significantly less variance from normal in heart rate acceleration, depression readings, subjective distress, and post-traumatic stress disorder ratings.
"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.
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).
Fear of the dark is a common fear or phobia among children and, to a varying degree, adults.
Though some fears are inborn, the majority are learned. Phobias develop through negative experiences and through observation. One way children begin to develop fears is by witnessing or hearing about dangers. Ollendick proposes while some phobias may originate from a single traumatizing experience, others may be caused by simpler, or less dramatic, origins such as observing another child’s phobic reaction or through the exposure to media that introduces phobias.
- 2% of parents linked their child’s phobia to a [direct conditioning episode]
- 26% of parents linked their child’s phobia to a [vicarious conditioning episodes]
- 56% of parents linked their child’s phobia to their child’s very first contact with water
- 16% of parents could not directly link their child’s phobia
In addition to asking about the origins of a child’s fear, the questionnaire asked if parents believed that “information associated with adverse consequences was the most influential factor in the development of their child’s phobia.” The results were as followed:
- 0% of parents though it was the most influential factor
- 14% of parents though it was somewhat influential
- 86% of parents though it had little to no influence
There are two assessment tools used to diagnose emetophobia; the Specific Phobia of Vomiting inventory and the Emetophobia Questionnaire. The Specific Phobia of Vomiting Inventory and the Emetophobia Questionnaire are both self-report questionnaires that focus on a different range of symptoms.
There have been a limited number of studies in regard to emetophobia. Victims of the phobia usually experience fear before vomiting, but feel less afterwards. The fear comes again however, if the victim fears they will throw up again.
Fear of the dark is usually not a fear of darkness itself, but a fear of possible or imagined dangers concealed by darkness. Some degree of fear of the dark is natural, especially as a phase of child development. Most observers report that fear of the dark seldom appears before the age of 2 years. When fear of the dark reaches a degree that is severe enough to be considered pathological, it is sometimes called scotophobia (from σκότος – "darkness"), or lygophobia (from λυγή – "twilight").
Some researchers, beginning with Sigmund Freud, consider the fear of the dark to be a manifestation of separation anxiety disorder.
An alternate theory was posited in the 1960s, when scientists conducted experiments in a search for molecules responsible for memory. In one experiment, rats, normally nocturnal animals, were conditioned to fear the dark and a substance called "scotophobin" was supposedly extracted from the rats' brains; this substance was claimed to be responsible for remembering this fear. These findings were subsequently debunked.
Some desensitization treatments produce short-term improvements in symptoms. Long-term treatment success has been elusive.
Gerascophobia is an abnormal or incessant fear of growing old or ageing.
Gerascophobia is a clinical phobia generally classified under specific phobias, fears of a single specific panic trigger. Gerascophobia may be based on anxieties of being left alone, without resources and incapable of caring for oneself. Sufferers may be young and healthy.
Symptoms include the fear of the future and the fear of needing to rely on others to do daily functions. Many also fear they will not play an active role in society when they get older.
The term "gerascophobia" comes from the Greek γηράσκω, "gerasko", "I grow old" and φόβος, "phobos", "fear". Some authors refer to it as gerontophobia, although this may also refer to the fear of the elderly.
Thalassophobia (Greek: θάλασσα, "thalassa", "sea" and φόβος, "phobos", "fear") is an intense and persistent fear of the sea or of sea travel.
Thalassophobia can include fear of being in large bodies of water, fear of the vast emptiness of the sea, and fear of distance from land. It can also include fear of the unknown, of what lurks beneath.