Rehab Centers for Phobias

A phobia is an unrelenting fear of a certain situation or activity or of a specific item. Common phobias include social phobia (the fear of speaking in public or of meeting new people), agoraphobia (the fear of going outside), and specific phobias such as arachnophobia (fear of spiders). Most people who suffer from phobias will try to find ways around being exposed to the situation or item which they are afraid of and as a result many phobias or phobia cases go unreported.

A common form of treatment for phobias is called desensitization. Desensitization is a process by which the individual that is afraid or phobic about something is exposed to circumstances that are close to the situation that they are phobic about in order to get them used to or desensitized about the situation. This type of phobia treatment has been proven to be very effective for individuals who suffer from even some of the most severe phobias.

Additional treatments for phobias include cognitive-behavioral therapy. This type of therapy focuses on teaching the individual how to change the way he or she thinks about a certain situation in order to reduce the fear or phobia about the situation. Behavior modification techniques are employed to teach the individual with the phobia an effective way or ways to cope with the fears.

Some therapists or rehab centers will use SSRI medications to treat phobias and others may use beta-blockers. Phobias are not usually treated with benzodiazepines the way many other anxiety disorders tend to be treated. In most cases, phobias are best treated with behavior modification, exposure to the phobia causing situation and SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors).