phobias

• Phobias - an anxiety disorder causing an irrational fear of a particular object or situation
• Three categories of phobias:

  Simple ( specific ) phobias

  Social phobias

  Agoraphobia
• Specific phobias are the most common type of phobias
• A specific phobia is where a person fears a specific object in the environment, for example arachnophobia, the fear of spiders
• Specific phobias can be divided into four categories:

  animal phobias

  injury phobias

  situational phobias

  natural phobias
• Social phobias - feelings of anxiety in social situations, like giving a speech in public.
• Agoraphobia can be caused by both simple or social phobias
• Behavioural characteristics of phobias:

  avoidance

  panic
• Avoidance - when someone with a phobia is presented with the thing they fear, their immediate response is to avoid it.
• Panic - when someone with a phobia isn't able to avoid the thing they fear, this causes high levels of stress and anxiety.
• emotional characteristics of phobias - excessive and unreasonable fear, anxiety or panic. This is triggered by the presence or anticipation of a specific situation or situation
• Cognitive characteristics of phobias:

  selective attention

  irrational beliefs
• selective attention - when a phobic item or situation is presented, the person will become fixated on it because of their irrational beliefs about the object
• Irrational thinking - defines someone's phobia towards something. A person may think that all spiders are deadly, even though no spiders in the UK actually are