Phobias complicating treatment of uterine carcinoma Many people fear medical procedures and sometimes need considerable reassurance from their doctor. Only rarely are they of phobic intensity and lead to avoidance of appropriate treatment but then they constitute a major health hazard. We describe the rapid response of one patient's phobias to behaviour therapy so that urgent surgical treatment...

The avoidance of situations and objects directly associated with the trauma and marked physiological arousal in the presence of feared stimuli are major PTSD symptoms. A similar picture is seen in specific phobias. However, PTSD has certain dissociative symptoms not present in phobias such as psychogenic amnesia, re-experiencing symptoms such as flashbacks and nightmares, and heightened levels ...

The present survey explored the acceptability of virtual reality (VR) exposure and in vivo exposure in 150 participants suffering from specific phobias. Seventy-six percent chose VR over in vivo exposure, and the refusal rate for in vivo exposure (27%) was higher than the refusal rate for VR exposure (3%). Results suggest that VR exposure could help increase the number of people who seek exposu...

The research did not test for all phobias that have a name, such as arachibutyrophobia (the fear of having peanut butter stick to the roof of one’s mouth). Among the least common phobias found in the survey, however, were trypanophobia (the fear of hypodermic needles and injections) and the fear of dentists. Less than ten percent had these problems, according to the doctoral dissertation by Rob...

Disabling phobias and phobia like compulsive rituals are surprisingly common in the general population, though only a minority ask for help. Behavioural treatment (exposure) and antidepressants are the most helpful approaches. Most patients can help themselves if they use a self exposure approach systematicaily under the guidance of a clinician. The method seems weli suited for use by general p...

BACKGROUND Previous studies examined caffeine use and caffeine dependence and risk for the symptoms, or diagnosis, of psychiatric disorders. The current study aimed to determine if generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), panic disorder, phobias, major depressive disorder (MDD), anorexia nervosa (AN), or bulimia nervosa (BN) shared common genetic or environmental factors with caffeine use, caffeine ...

Clinical hypnosis and EMDR have both been employed in the treatment of phobias. EMDR has been a controversial treatment method with the research showing mixed results concerning its efficacy. Many studies have shown the effectiveness of hypnosis in the treatment of phobias, but no studies have directly compared hypnosis to EMDR. This paper discusses each approach to treatment, with special emph...

BACKGROUND We evaluated for phobias the prediction of the stress-diathesis model that the magnitude of stress at onset is inversely proportional to the level of underlying diathesis. METHODS In more than 7500 twins from a population-based registry, we assessed the personality trait of neuroticism--as an index of phobia-proneness--and the lifetime histories of 5 phobia subtypes (agoraphobia, s...

Theories of specific phobias consider classical conditioning as a central mechanism in the pathogenesis and maintenance of the disorder. Although the neuronal network underlying human fear conditioning is understood in considerable detail, no study to date has examined the neuronal correlates of fear conditioning directly in patients with specific phobias. Using functional magnet resonance imag...

only given a rough idea of their actual numbers in the general community. They can also cause tremendous distress and disability to people over many years. Nevertheless, there has been a tendency in the past to treat them mainly as medical curiosities and few probics benefited much from the attentions of doctors. Even recent editions of standard psychiatric textbooks have dealt very inadequatel...