How Common Are Specific Phobias, What Are People Scared Of, And What Can You Do If You Have A Phobia?

Many people feel a bit uneasy with the idea of, for instance, spending time on the roof of a skyscraper, getting on an airplane, or encountering a spider — but are able to cope with their discomfort and do what they need to through clenched teeth, without feeling like the thing they're slightly scared of is going to be the end of them.

It's different for people with specific phobias. Their fears can have a significant impact on their daily lives even if they don't encounter their worst nightmares, and if they do, it can cause extreme symptoms. 

What are specific phobias?

The term "specific phobia" appears in the fifth (and current) edition of the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM-5), in the chapter on anxiety disorders — so it belongs to that wider diagnostic "family". It's easy to see why. Phobias are a form of anxiety related to a specific situation, object, or creature, after all.

This clinical term basically means the same thing most people would think of when they hear the word "phobia" without the qualifier "specific" — as the National Institute of Mental Health describes it, an "intense, irrational fear of something that poses little or no actual danger". So, a specific phobia is a phobia of a particular object or situation, rather than a more generalized kind of anxiety. The qualifier "something that poses little to no actual danger" matters here, because intense fear of something in your presence that in fact threatens your life or health is not a phobia.

What are the most common specific phobias?

When someone is diagnosed with a specific phobia under the DSM-5, a code is used to denote the object of phobia. Phobias common enough to be listed in there include:

• Animals — most commonly spiders, dogs, or insects.
• Natural environment — this can include heights, storms, and water, but also any other naturally ocurring phenomenon such as earthquakes, wildfires, or tsunamis.
• Blood, injections, and injury — that speaks for itself. Fear of medical care or doctors would also fall into this category.
• Situational — extreme fear of elevators, small and enclosed spaces, or airplanes, for instance.
• "Other" — examples of phobias prevalent enough to be listed in this miscellaneous category are fears of vomiting, choking, loud sounds, or people wearing costumes.

Somewhere between seven and nine percent of the US population is estimated to have a specific phobia, and while the situation in Europe is similar, countries in South and Central America, Africa, and Asia appear to have lower rates.

What causes specific phobias?

Some people have phobias with obvious causes — they can develop after a dangerous or distressing incident. A person may become phobic of hospitals after a loved one died there, for instance, or scared of dogs after they were bitten. For most people with phobias, however, there isn't a specific known cause. In children, phobias may go away spontaneously and not be that severe. They may simply be the result of fear of the unknown.

What are the diagnostic criteria for specific phobias?

To be clinically diagnosed with a specific phobia, you'll:

• Be terrified of a specific thing or situation. When you encounter the object of your phobia, you will experience intense distress.
• Go to great lengths to avoid the thing you're scared of, or endure it with intense feelings or horror and anxiety. 
• Experience a fear that is excessive when you take your cultural context and the objective danger the object of fear poses into account. 
• Keep fearing the same thing, for at least six months but frequently much (much!) longer. Between 10 and 30 percent of people with specific phobias will have them for decades. 
• Be negatively impacted by the phobia in ways beyond just experiencing fear — your social or work life may suffer, or you'll have difficulties with functioning in other important ways. 

Another mental disorder shouldn't better be able to explain the symptoms — for instance, generalized anxiety disorder or social anxiety disorder, or post-traumatic stress disorder, in which you may be terrified of something that reminds you of the trauma, can cause symptoms that look a lot like specific phobias. You can, however, be diagnosed with both a phobia and another anxiety disorder.

What are the treatment options for specific phobias?

If you're terrified of something really obscure or something that you're rather unlikely to encounter in your natural environment — depending on where and how you live, that may include, say, sharks, physalis (a plant), collapsed mining shafts, or cassowaries — a specific phobia may not deal you much functional damage. 

If, in the other hand, your object of phobia is something you commonly encounter, or would if you didn't take extreme measures to avoid it, a specific phobia can truly mess with your quality of life.