Word: phobias
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...that's what doctors do. A patient visiting Barlow's Boston clinic is first assessed for the presence of a specific phobia and then guided through an intensive day or two of graduated exposure. People who are afraid of syringes and blood, for example, may first be shown a magazine photo with a trace of blood depicted in it. Innocuous photos give way to graphic ones, and graphic ones to a display of a real, empty syringe. Over time, the syringe is brought closer, and the patient learns to hold it and even tolerate having blood drawn...
With that habituation comes profound recovery. In studies recently conducted by Lars Goran Ost, a psychology professor at Stockholm University and one of the pioneers of one-day phobia treatments, a staggering 80% to 95% of patients get their phobias under control after just one session. And when symptoms disappear, they usually stay gone. Patients, he says, rarely experience a significant phobic relapse, and almost never replace the thing they no longer fear with a fresher phobia object...
...office--like heights and flying in airplanes--virtual-reality programs are available to provide simulated exposure under professional supervision. Software for other fears is being written all the time. "Not all people respond to virtual reality," says Barlow, "but on average, it's just as effective for treating certain phobias." If specific phobias were the only type of phobias around, things would be decidedly easier for doctors and patients. But the two other members of the phobia troika--social phobias and panic disorders--can be a little trickier...
...million Americans who have experienced or will someday suffer from a phobia (and many will have more than one), 35 million will suffer from social phobia, and the battle they fight is a harrowing one. Richard Heimberg at Temple University's Adult Anxiety Clinic often thinks of the 50-year-old patient who talked frequently about getting married and having a family--a reasonable dream, except that his terror of rejection had kept him from ever going out on a date. After much encouragement and counseling, he finally screwed up his courage enough to ask a woman out. The next...
...treatment for agoraphobia is much the same as it is for social phobia: cognitive-behavioral therapy and drugs. In many cases, recovery takes longer than it does for social phobias because agoraphobic behavior can become so entrenched. Nonetheless, once therapy and drug treatments get under way, they sometimes move surprisingly quickly. "The best way to treat agoraphobia," says Ost, "is by individual therapy, once a week for 10 or 12 weeks...