Agoraphobia is an anxiety about being trapped in situations or places with no way to escape or to get help easily. This anxiety is also categorized as panic disorder along with phobic disorder, and like with social phobia, it can lead to avoidance of the situations or places. According to Mental Health Association NSW Inc, agoraphobia literally means “fear of the marketplace”, which clearly describe the environments such fear can be developed in; busy places, crowded places, and out in large fields. If the person can not find an easy way out to leave the place, his/her anxiety increases and become severe. Common situations where it is very difficult for the people with agoraphobia to withstand are standing in line waiting for his/her turn, sitting in the middle of a room where it makes the person feel as though in center of attention, riding on a bus, train or plane.

According to John H. Greist, MD and James W. Jefferson, MD, agoraphobia is most common and found in about 4% of women and 2% of men during any 12-month per an annual period. This disorder is usually developed in the early 20s, and is very rare to develop after the age of 40.

 Agoraphobia can be caused by two situations. Some people develop agoraphobia after experiencing a panic attack in one of the above stated situations. Panic attack, the sudden unwarned striking, causes the person to become aware and fear of that, that he/she tends to avoid crowded or busy places where it is hard to find a way to escape. Some other people simply feel uncomfortable in those situations initially or by nature. Panic attack will never develop in them or only development afterwards. Like all disorders and phobias, agoraphobia often interferes with daily lives, sometimes extremely considerably that it makes people to stay in familiar places all the time without going out into surrounding environments and leads to isolation and avoidances directly to the “crowd” and indirectly with surroundings.

Can agoraphobia be treated as well? If agoraphobia is left untreated, like social phobia, it can become severe but no extensive formal treatments are necessary to treat this disorder; behavior therapy is usually used and it works effectively. As before, exposure therapy, a type of behavior therapy can be used as treatment on the people with agoraphobia, in which people are exposed repeatedly to the anxiety triggering situations. This therapy is beneficial and works well on those who practice and follow the directions as a daily routine and helps more than 90% of people (Greist & Jefferson, 2007). Cognitive behavior therapy can also be sued for treating agoraphobia, and by treating with this, people learn to recognize when their thoughts are foreshadowing anxieties, to control such thoughts, and to modify and restrict their behaviors accordingly. If people with agoraphobia develop panic attacks, antidepressants may be necessary but, behavior therapy can not be used while the person under anti-anxiety drugs medication because substances that depress the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) can interfere with the natural neurotransmitter secretions.

By: Kaung | ChitChat247.com | KMKBlog.com