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Facts About Phobias
By Amber Smith
Many people fear public speaking. Most adjust. They apply extra deodorant, take deep breaths and get through their presentations just fine. For some, however, the fear feeds itself. They blush, tremble, sweat profusely, stammer and stutter, perhaps even lose the ability to speak. They have a social phobia about public speaking, and they're far from alone. The National Institute of Mental Health estimates at least 5.3 million Americans (almost 4 percent) suffer from a social phobia, an overwhelming anxiety and self-consciousness in social settings. The Surgeon General's Report on Mental Health issued at the end of 1999 puts the number of people affected by social phobias as high as 7 percent. But social phobias are only one type of fear. More than one in 10 Americans have one or more specific phobias, the institute estimates, and an additional 2 percent suffer from panic disorder each year. These numbers are not far from those reported in a telephone study of 1,000 adults done recently by Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, Inc. for Discovery Health. While the poll showed 7 percent of Americans say they suffer from a phobia, nearly 40 percent confess an extreme fear of an object or situation, the most common being fear of snakes and fear of being buried alive. One in five Americans— 24 percent of women and 17 percent of men—say they have some degree of fear of being in crowded or wide-open places. Almost a third of Americans say they've suffered a panic attack. |
