Phobia: Informative Speech (IMD207)

Many people didn t know what exactly phobia is because this phobia contains a lot of types that people not aware of. A phobia is an intense fear of something that, in reality, poses little or no actual danger which we can defined that this phobia is the unrelenting fear of a situation, activity, or thing that causes one to want to avoid it. Continuously, there have some common phobia which is social phobia that s fear of public speaking, meeting new people or other social situation. Besides that, agoraphobia also one of the phobia types which this phobia is fear of being outside and then the specific phobias which fear of particular items or situation.

However, these phobias are largely underreported, probably because many phobia sufferers find ways to avoid the situations of which they are phobic. Therefore, based on
http://www.medicinenet.com/phobias statistic those estimates how many people suffer from

phobias vary widely, but at minimum which phobias afflict more than 6 million people in the United States, with the average age of developing a phobia being about 10 years of age. Other facts about phobias include that these illnesses are not unusual and are thought to affect up to 28 out of every 100 people, and in all western countries, phobia strike 7%-13% of the population. Women tend to be twice as likely to suffer from a phobia compared to men.

What are the causes of these phobias? Usually there is no one specific known cause for phobia but it is thought that phobias run in families, being influenced by culture and how they have been parented which also can be triggered by life events. Pointing on family, phobia are about three times more likely to also suffer which the family members in the family easily influenced than to those who do not have such a family history. Moreover, within the parents who s overly protected or were distant in raising them may be at more risk of developing phobias. Another possible contributor to the development of phobias is classical conditioning which a person

responds to something frightening by generalizing the fear of that specific object or situation to more generalized objects or situation. This can be example with an individual that may respond to a real threat by one dog to a fear of all dogs.

These phobias often attack the sufferer with a panic attack which including the feeling of panic, dread or terror, despite recognition that those feelings are excessive in relationship to any real danger. Moreover, the sufferer will having physical symptoms such as shaking, sweating, trouble thinking clearly, nausea, rapid heartbeat, trouble breathing and an overwhelming desire to escape the situation that is causing the phobic reaction. This can make extreme measures which taken to avoid or escape the situation.

How usually these phobias being assessed? Pointing on the assessed among health care, there have so many providers of health care which may help diagnose phobias, including licensed mental-health therapists, family physicians or other primary-care medical providers, specialists whom you see for a medical condition, psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers. If one of these professionals suspects that you may suffer from a phobia, you will likely be asked a number of questions to understand all the symptoms you may be experiencing and you may need to submit to a medical interview and physical examination. Based on the http://www.medicinenet.com/phobias, a phobia may be associated with a number of other mental-health conditions especially other anxiety disorders. In addition to panic disorder, the examples of other anxiety disorders include generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Thus, this anxiety disorders in general may be associated with a number of medical conditions or can be a side effect of various medications, routine laboratory tests which are often performed during the initial evaluation to rule out other possible causes of the symptoms.

What will happen if these phobias left untreated? Well, phobia may worsen to the point in which the person s life is seriously affected, both by the phobia itself and/or by attempts to avoid or conceal it. This is because, some people can have problems with their friends and family, may be failed in school, and/or lost job while struggling to cope with a severe phobia. For example, an individual having phobia of afraid to take flying which the result can unable the person to travel and this can also affected to the family and friends. There may be periods of spontaneous improvement but a phobia does not usually go away unless the person receives treatments designed specifically to help phobia sufferers. Moreover, this phobia can be seen as an alcoholic that can be up to 10 times more likely to suffer from a phobia than those who are no alcoholics, and phobic individuals can be twice more likely to suffer from an alcohol addiction than those who have never been phobic. This can be seen that the phobia has given the sufferer a stressful moment in their life if the phobia left untreated. Thus, it has even been found that phobic anxiety can be life-threatening for some people which increasing the risk of suffering from heart disease in both men and women.

Since phobia has been assessed by the health care s providers, some treatment to overcome this phobia has been carried out to help those who suffer from phobias is thought to be most effective when psychotherapy and medications that are specific to the treatment of phobia are both used. One form of psychotherapy involves the supportive and gradual exposure of the individual with phobias to circumstances that are increasingly close to the one they are phobic about which desensitization. Thus, these situations can either consist of actual or computergenerated anxiety-provoking stimuli. Besides that, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) has been found to significantly decrease phobic symptoms by helping the phobia sufferer change his or her way of thinking. Followed by, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) medications are often used to treat phobias, particularly when desensitization and CBT are inadequately effective. These medications affect levels of serotonin in the brain. Then, these phobias are also sometimes treated using beta-blocker medications which decrease the physical symptoms associated with panic by blocking the effects that adrenaline has on the body. An example of a

beta-blocker is propranolol. This class of medications causes relaxation but is used much less often these days to treat anxiety due to the possibility of addiction and the risk of overdose, especially if taken when alcohol is also being consumed.

Living with phobia, have you ever think that how the sufferer cope with these phobias in their daily life? There have some ways that phobia sufferers can work toward overcoming their fears include talking about their fears, refraining from avoiding situations they find stressful, imagining themselves facing their fears by visualization it and making positive self-statements like I will be okay and I can do it . In fact when self-help approaches are combined with brief psychotherapy, people with phobias may achieve significant improvement in symptoms.

So, as we can see that phobia is an intense fear of something that we may get from influence and experiences of certain situation that can make us feel that it is dangerous even it is only our self-fear. Then, treatment should be the best ways to avoid us and also the sufferers from getting worst.

That s all, thank you for your attention from the beginning.

Noor Azianie binti Mohd Raffae 2010932199 Diploma in Information Management.