PHobia:
The NICE recommended treatment for phobia is cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). Phobias can form as a fear of anything imaginable and typically fall into the following categories: blood-injection/injury phobias, situational phobia, natural environment phobia and animal phobias. The most common phobias are as follows: social phobia (anxiety), agoraphobia, claustrophobia, emetophobia (vomit), arachnophobia (spiders), acrophobia (heights), aerophobia (flying), cynophobia (dogs), trypanophobia (injections), haemophobia (blood).
During your treatment your therapist will assess the components of your phobia and they will work with you to set goals and develop a formulation of the problem. Your therapist will look at factors, such as your appraisal of the feared object/situation and the behavioural reactions to your phobia. In particular, your therapist will help you understand the link between your reactions and the ongoing maintenance of your phobia. They will collaborate with you to develop a bespoke treatment plan, involving the monitoring of your phobia, graded exposure and behavioural experiments. Relapse maintenance will form an important aspect of your treatment, to help maintain the gains you have achieved during therapy.
What to look out for:
If you experience excessive or unreasonable, persistent and intense fear triggered by a specific object or situation.
Your fear reaction must be out of proportion to the actual situation and appears almost instantaneously when presented with the object or situation.
You have a compulsion to go out of your way to avoid the object or situation, or you endures it with extreme distress.
The phobia significantly impacts your life, such as your ability to work, study, or personal life.
The above symptoms have been experienced for at least six months.
Your symptoms cannot be explained by another anxiety disorders with similar symptoms.
Treatment FOCUS
Type: CBT
Sessions: 8+
Length: 50 mins
Treatment Focus:
Assessment
Goal Setting
Formulation
Identifying triggers
Monitoring phobia
Understanding the threat appraisal
Graded Exposure
Behavioural experiments
Imagery exposure
Relapse Prevention
Links
NICE Guidelines for Social Phobia
https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg159
NHS
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/phobias/
TOP UK
