Phobias (Psychopathology) Introduction

A phobia can be defined as an irrational fear of an object or situation.

The DSM-5 recognises three categories of phobias (DSM-5 - Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorder)

- Specific Phobia

- Social Phobia (Social anxiety)

- Agoraphobia


Specific Phobia

This relates to a phobia of an object such as spiders, or a situation such as elevators or airplanes.


Social Phobia

This is a phobia of a public, social situation, like getting on a bus, public speaking, reading in class or using a public toilet


Agoraphobia

This is a phobia of being outside in a public place. 


Behavioural Characteristics of Phobias

Now is your chance to do some thinking and application. 

Scenario - if you had a phobia or fear of something, what are you likely to do to deal with the feelings of fear that surround it?

Let's say you have a fear of snakes and someone tells you there is a snake in their schoolbag. What would you do?

Now lets go to page 140 in the Psychology to look at some behavioural characteristics of phobias. 


Emotional Characteristics of Phobias

Let's look at our above scenario with the snake. 

How might you (or another person) respond emotionally to the idea of a snake in the room?

Would experience anxiety? Fear? 


Cognitive Characteristics of Phobias

Cognitive characteristics relate to the thought process surrounding the phobia.

A big feature is the irrational nature of the person's thinking and the resistance to rational arguments. 

For example, what if we explain that the snake mentioned above is just a plastic toy snake, but the person still will not enter the room in the fear that others may be lying, or that the plastic snake may morph into a real snake somehow.


Without sharing too much personal information, do you have any phobias?

I have used the snake as an example as I have a bit of an irrational fear of snakes.


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