Currently, scholarly accepted and empirically proven treatments are very limited due to its relatively new concept. However, promising treatments include cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy and combined with pharmacological interventions. Treatments using tranylcypromine and clonazepam were successful in reducing the effects of nomophobia.

Cognitive behavioral therapy seems to be effective by reinforcing autonomous behavior independent from technological influences, however, this form of treatment lacks randomized trails. Another possible treatment is "Reality Approach," or Reality therapy asking patient to focus behaviors away from cell phones. In extreme or severe cases, neuropsychopharmacology may be advantageous, ranging from benzodiazepines to antidepressants in usual doses. Patients were also successfully treated using tranylcypromine combined with clonazepam. However, it is important to note that these medications were designed to treat social anxiety disorder and not nomophobia directly. It may be rather difficult to treat nomophobia directly, but more plausible to investigate, identify, and treat any underlying mental disorders if any exist.

Even though nomophobia is a fairly new concept, there are validated psychometric scales available to help in the diagnostic, an example of one of these scales is the "Questionnaire of Dependence of Mobile Phone/Test of Mobile Phone Dependence (QDMP/TMPD)".

Nomophobia is a proposed name for the phobia of being out of cellular phone contact. It is, however, arguable that the word "phobia" is misused and that in the majority of cases it is another form of anxiety disorder.

Although nomophobia does not appear in the current "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders", Fifth Edition (DSM-5), it has been proposed as a "specific phobia", based on definitions given in the DSM-IV. According to Bianchi and Philips (2005) psychological factors are involved in the overuse of a mobile phone. These could include low self-esteem (when individuals looking for reassurance use the mobile phone in inappropriate ways) and extroverted personality (when naturally social individuals use the mobile phone to excess). It is also highly possible that nomophobic symptoms may be caused by other underlying and preexisting mental disorders, with likely candidates including social phobia or social anxiety disorder, social anxiety, and panic disorder.

The term, an abbreviation for "no-mobile-phone phobia", was coined during a 2008 study by the UK Post Office who commissioned YouGov, a UK-based research organization evaluating anxieties suffered by mobile phone users. The study found that nearly 53% of mobile phone users in Britain tend to be anxious when they "lose their mobile phone, run out of battery or credit, or have no network coverage". The study, sampled 2,163 people, found that about 58% of men and 47% of women suffer from the phobia, and an additional 9% feel stressed when their mobile phones are off. 55% of those surveyed cited keeping in touch with friends or family as the main reason that they got anxious when they could not use their mobile phones. The study compared stress levels induced by the average case of nomophobia to be on-par with those of "wedding day jitters" and trips to the dentist.

Another study found that out of 547 male, undergraduate students in Health Services, 23% of the students were classified as nomophobic, while an additional 64% were at risk of developing nomophobia. Of these students, approximately 77% checked their mobile phones 35 or more times a day.

More than one in two nomophobes never switch off their mobile phones. The study and subsequent coverage of the phobia resulted in two editorial columns authored by individuals who minimized their mobile phone use or chose not to own one at all. These authors appeared to treat the condition with light undertones of mockery, or outright disbelief and amusement.

Language classicists do not like this word or approve of it, because of its inherent confusion with the existing, though rare, nomophobia, a fear of laws, rules or regulations. The latter derives from the Greek "nomos" (a law, rule or regulation) seen in such other words as astronomy (rules about the stars), gastronomy (rules about food and eating), autonomy (ruling oneself), economy (rules governing the finances of the state or household), antinomy (a law contrary to another law), metronome (a device to regulate metre or beat), nomocracy (the rule of law in society), nomography (the law in written form), nomology (the study or science of law), nomothete (a lawgiver), and the archaic anomy (lawlessness). The neologistic meaning referred to in this article, relating to mobile phones, seems to have been adopted by the younger generations, and by those without a deeper understanding of the Oxford guidelines on word construction, in which typically Greek words are attached to Greek words (and Latin to Latin, etc.).