What is Specific Phobia

Specific phobia is an irrational and persistent fear of a specific situation or object. These are very common phobias and leads to anxiety, nausea, and rapid heart beats. The most common phobias are fears of heights, dogs, snakes, water, wind, flying, blood, injections, injury, tunnels, escalators and birds.

These are also simple phobias and are found in more than 1 in 10 people. These are more prevalent in women than men. Phobias are believed to develop during childhood but some fears appear in adolescence and adulthood. Some of the phobias vanish after a specific period but most of them are persistent and can be eradicated using psycho- therapies and medications.

There are five types of specific phobias :

Animal phobias : These are fears caused by an animal or insect.

Natural environment phobias : These are fears caused by objects found in nature. The most fears involving natural environment are fears of thunder, storm, darkness and water.

Situational phobias : These are fears triggered by a specific situation like enclosed spaces fear of elevators, fear of flying, fear of dentists, fear of driving, fear of tunnels, and fear of bridges.

Blood-Injection-Injury phobia : These are fears of blood, injury, injections or a fear of shots.

Other phobias : Specific phobias also include some other fears that cannot be categorized under the above mentioned types. The most common of these phobias are fear of choking, fear of illness, fear of injury, fear of death, and fear of clowns.