Phobia

This is a group of disorders in which anxiety is evoked only, or predominantly, in certain well defined situations which are not inherently dangerous.

Fears may be considered phobias, when anxiety is sufficiently intense to handicap the individual in his or her everyday life. Phobias often lead to avoidance behaviour.

A phobia may be defined loosely as an abnormal fear, but in this context it refers to:

• a fear out of proportion of objective risks
• the fear cannot be reasoned or explained away
• the fear is beyond voluntary control
• the fear leads to avoidance of the feared situation
• the presence of anticipatory anxiety

An irrational fear without a tendency to avoid the specific situation is not a phobia. Therefore abnormal fears of internal stimuli i.e. "illness phobias" or "obsessional phobias" such as a "cancer phobia", do not conform to the stricter definition of a phobia and are better recognised as hypochondriasis or obsessional thoughts.

A phobic response is very similar to a panic attack, the principle distinction being that of the stimulus - apparent in phobia, not apparent or non-specific in panic attacks.