Anxiety-phobic disorders are a large group of disorders of neurotic origin, accompanied by irrational, unreasonable fears and causeless anxiety. Such cognitive, physical and behavioral disturbances can develop in an individual in specific situations, during contact with certain objects, as well as in anticipation of such events. Despite its rather severe manifestations, phobic disorder responds well to treatment if promptly consulted with a psychotherapist.
What are anxiety-phobic disorders
In the international classification of diseases, anxiety-phobic syndrome is defined as a category of disorders, the symptom of which is irrational fear , which manifests itself only in specific situations.
Anxiety-phobic disorder is accompanied by a list of mental and physical reactions . They develop as a peculiar reaction to meeting an object of fear, as well as due to conscious shelter from situations that provoke an exacerbation of the disease.
general information
Anxiety-phobic disorder is a common symptom of diseases such as psychasthenia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and various neuroses .
The disorder is quite common; to one degree or another, it affects about 5-7% of the world's population. Most often it is observed in people with neurological and mental diseases, in most cases in women 25-45 years old.
ICD-10 code
Anxiety-phobic syndrome has a code in the international classification of diseases F40 . It can occur both with panic disorders (ICD code F40.01) and without them (code F40.00).
Psychotherapy for the treatment of phobic neurosis
This stage of treatment is necessary to eliminate excessive anxiety and correct inappropriate behavior. In addition, during sessions, doctors teach patients a culture of relaxation, which is very important for any form of neurosis. Phobic disorder can be treated in both group and individual sessions.
If phobias play a more significant role during the course of the disease, the patient needs psycho-emotional support therapy, which will help improve overall well-being. Hypnosis and behavioral techniques allow you to get rid of obsessive fears. During sessions, patients are taught to properly confront the object that provokes fear, as well as to resort to a variety of relaxation methods.
Among other things, rational methods of psychotherapy can be used in the treatment of phobic neurosis. At the same time, the essence of the pathology is described and explained to the patient in detail, which creates an adequate understanding of the symptoms of the disease. Thanks to such work, people, for example, begin to realize that the slightest deviations in the functioning of internal organs are not dangerous and do not at all indicate the presence of a serious illness.
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Possible reasons
The exact causes of anxiety-phobic disorder have not been established by medicine. Doctors identify a number of provoking factors that contribute to the development of the disease :
- hereditary predisposition to mental disorder;
- personal characteristics - temperament, inability to cope with stressful situations, tendency to nervousness and anxiety;
- depressive states;
- the specifics of upbringing are the early loss of parents, lack of income, corporal punishment.
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Also, severe depression, neuroses, and hypochondriacal syndrome are identified as factors provoking the development of anxiety-phobic disorders
Risk group
In most cases, choleric people are susceptible to anxiety-phobic syndrome , people suffering from neuroses who do not have the opportunity and do not know how to overcome stressful situations on their own.
At risk are:
- adolescents;
- women during pregnancy and recovery after childbirth;
- women during menopause;
- people with a hereditary predisposition to phobias.
Most often, this disease occurs among suspicious, irritable people (70% women), dependent on the opinions of others . An important role is also played by the hereditary factor - if parents suffer from various anxiety-phobic disorders, the likelihood of this disease in the child increases significantly.
Symptoms
Signs of anxiety-phobic disorders can have varying severity and appear both during direct contact with the object of panic fear and when thinking about it.
Common symptoms:
- causeless anxiety;
- obsessions;
- sleep disorder;
- a state of constant internal tension;
- suspiciousness;
- unreasonable suspicion.
In the absence of effective treatment, the symptoms of the disease begin to appear on an ongoing basis , turning into regular panic attacks.
Types of anxiety-phobic disorders
In psychiatry, all anxiety-phobic disorders are divided into several types. The main groups include :
- Simple – fears of specific situations, objects and actions. Most often, fear is caused by spiders, snakes, various insects, air travel, darkness, heights, blood, and being in an enclosed space. Phobias develop mainly in childhood.
- Social – with such phobias, fears are caused by everyone’s attention and condemnation of others. For such people, panic is caused by speaking in public, visiting crowded places, and the need to communicate with unfamiliar people. Most often, such fears develop in teenagers who are afraid of seeming funny and ridiculous.
- Agoraphobia is the fear of being in a dangerous situation in which help will not be provided in a timely manner and there will be no way out. People with such a phobia are afraid to be alone in the house, to visit cafes, theaters, shopping centers, or to be in any open space.
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also includes pathological conditions accompanied by pronounced behavioral and cognitive symptoms against a background of fear . These are various panic attacks, attacks similar to Da Costa's syndrome, generalized anxiety disorders.
Clinical picture
The main manifestations of obsessive-phobic neurotic disorder include panic attacks, agoraphobia and hypochondriacal phobias.
Panic attacks
Panic attacks are manifested by severe fear and a feeling of impending death, accompanied by vegetative symptoms (sweating, dizziness, feeling of lack of air, palpitations, nausea). Such attacks can last from several minutes to an hour. During panic attacks, there is often a fear of going crazy and losing control over your behavior. Panic attacks are characteristic of panic disorder; I devoted a separate article to its detailed description.
As a rule, panic attacks occur spontaneously, but sometimes their appearance can be provoked by sudden changes in weather conditions, lack of sleep, stress, physical exertion, excessive sexual activity or alcohol abuse.
Some diseases of internal organs can cause the first panic attacks. These are gastritis, pancreatitis, osteochondrosis, heart disease, thyroid dysfunction.
Agoraphobia
Agoraphobia is not only a fear of open spaces, but also a fear of crowds, crowded places, and a fear of going outside. There are a number of obsessive fears similar to agoraphobia. Among them are claustrophobia (fear of enclosed spaces), transport phobias (fear of traveling on a train, plane, bus).
As a rule, the first manifestations of anxiety-phobic disorders are panic attacks, followed by agoraphobia.
With phobias, anxiety and obsessive fear appear not only in specific situations, but even when people remember similar situations and imagine them.
Typical for the development of phobic disorders is the expansion of situations that cause fear. For example, with transport phobias, an obsessive fear of moving in the subway first appears, then the fear of public ground transport and taxis joins. People suffering from obsessive-phobic neurotic disorders are not afraid of transport itself, but of situations that may arise in them. For example, the fear that in the metro, due to the large distance between stations, a person will not be able to receive medical assistance in a timely manner if a panic attack occurs.
You can read in more detail about the causes of agoraphobia, the main symptoms, treatment and overcoming the disorder on your own in this article.
Hypochondriacal phobias
Hypochondriacal phobias are the fear of some serious illness. They are also called nosophobias.
The most common are carcinophobia (fear of getting cancer), cardiophobia (obsessive fear of heart disease), stroke phobia (fear of stroke), AIDS phobia and syphilophobia (fear of contracting AIDS or syphilis). Hypochondriacal phobias can also be manifestations of hypochondriacal depression.
People suffering from phobias do everything to avoid the situation that causes them fear. With transport phobias, people with anxiety-phobic disorder do not use elevators or transport; they walk everywhere. Those who are pathologically afraid of getting cancer constantly turn to doctors to conduct thorough examinations. But even good test results do not reassure patients for long. The first minor deviations in the functioning of internal organs are immediately perceived as the appearance of a serious, incurable disease.
Social phobias
Phobic anxiety disorder can be accompanied by a range of social phobias.
Social phobias involve a fear of being the center of attention and fear of being judged negatively by others, and people avoid social situations as much as possible.
The first signs of social phobias usually appear during adolescence or young adulthood. Quite often, the appearance of phobias is provoked by adverse psychological or social influences. Initially, the fear of being the center of attention affects only certain situations (for example, answering at the blackboard, appearing on stage) or contact with a certain group of people (the local “elite” among students at school, representatives of the opposite sex). At the same time, communication with loved ones and family does not cause fear.
Over time, social phobia can manifest itself only in relative restrictions in the sphere of social activity (fear of communicating with superiors, fear of eating in public places). If a person finds himself in a similar situation, then shyness, embarrassment, a feeling of inner constraint, trembling, and sweating appear.
Obsessive-phobic disorders can also manifest themselves as specific phobias - obsessive fears associated only with a specific situation. Such phobias include fear of thunderstorms, heights, pets, and visiting the dentist.
Treatment methods
The mechanism of development of anxiety-phobic disorder has been thoroughly studied by medicine. That is why , with timely access to a qualified specialist, the disease responds well to treatment using psychotherapy or medication.
Medicines
In the complex treatment of anxiety-phobic disorders, medications are used. Antidepressants, tranquilizers, and sedatives are used for this purpose . They stop panic attacks and normalize the patient’s psycho-emotional background.
Psychotherapy
The psychotherapist selects a method for correcting the patient’s psycho-emotional state on an individual basis. It depends on the specifics of the violations and their severity . Cognitive behavioral therapy or hypnosis sessions are most often used.
Cognitive behavioral therapy in the form of group or individual sessions helps the patient transform negative thoughts into positive ones, learn to soberly and judiciously assess reality.
When immersed in a trance with the help of hypnosis, it is possible to treat even advanced forms of anxiety-phobic disorders, identifying in detail the trigger mechanism and cause of the disease.
Treatment of phobic neurosis
The symptoms and causes of panic fear of a particular object are the key to prescribing appropriate therapy. But be that as it may, treatment for such a condition should be comprehensive, including not only psychotherapy, but also the use of certain medications.
The antidepressant Anafranil is most often used to relieve panic attacks. In addition, other drugs with a similar effect help to cope with this symptom of a phobic disorder:
Moclobemide is commonly used to treat social phobias.
In addition to antidepressants, tranquilizers - Hydroxyzine and Meprobamate - help fight the manifestations of a phobic disorder. These medications have few side effects, and their prolonged use does not lead to drug dependence.
In acute forms of phobic neurosis, the most effective are benzodiazepine tranquilizers - Clonazepam and Alprazolam. In addition, Elenium and Diazepam can be administered as droppers or intramuscularly. But these medications can only be used short-term to prevent addiction.
For phobias that are accompanied by complex systems of defensive reactions (for example, obsessive counting or decomposition of words) and delusional states, antipsychotics - Haloperidol or Triftazin - may be prescribed.
Features of diagnosis and treatment in childhood
Anxiety-phobic disorders in children manifest themselves in the form of obsessive actions (twisting or pulling out hair, thumb or clothing sucking), and behavioral disturbances. Their symptoms may include attacks of dizziness, irritability, tearfulness, and a tendency to conflict in kindergarten or school.
To treat the syndrome in children, psychotherapy sessions and conversations between parents and the child about safety and confidence in the future will help. All conflict situations and sources of stress need to be discussed and analyzed together with the child.
