In addition, a number of neologisms have appeared with the suffix -phobia, which are not phobias in clinical sense, but rather describe a negative attitude towards something, see section Non-clinical uses of the term below.

Phobias (in the clinical meaning of the term) are the most common form of anxiety disorder. An American study by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) found that between 5.1% and 21.5% of Americans suffer from phobias. Broken down by age and gender, the study found that phobias were the most common mental illness among women in all age groups and the second most common illness among men older than 25.

The opposite of the suffix -phobia is a -philia or -philie (meaning "love of").

Understanding and classifying phobias

Most psychologists and psychiatrists divide phobias into three categories:

Social phobias - fears to do with other people and social relationships such as performance anxiety, fears of eating in public, etc. Specific phobias - fear of a single specific panic trigger, like dogs, flying, running water and so on. Agoraphobia - a generalised fear of leaving your home or your small familiar 'safe' area, and of the inevitable panic attacks that will follow. Agoraphobia is the only phobia regularly treated as a medical condition.

Many specific phobias, like fears of dogs, heights, spider bites, and then forth, are extensions of fears that everyone has. People with these phobias treat them by avoiding the thing they fear.

Many specific phobias can be traced back to a specific triggering event, usually a traumatic experience at an early age. Social phobias and agoraphobia have more complex causes that are not entirely known at this time. It is believed that heredity, genetics and brain-chemistry combine with life-experiences to play a major role in the development of anxiety disorders and phobias.

Phobias vary in severity among individuals, with some phobics simply disliking or avoiding the subject of their fear and suffering mild anxiety. Others suffer fully-fledged panic attacks with all the associated disabling symptoms.

It is possible for a sufferer to become phobic about virtually anything. The name of a phobia generally contains a Greek word for what the patient fears plus the suffix -phobia. Creating these terms is something of a word game. Few of these terms are found in medical literature.

Treatment

Some therapists use virtual reality to desensitize patients to the feared thing. Other forms of therapy that may be of benefit to phobics are systematic desensitization and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). Anti-anxiety medication can also be of assistance in some cases. Most phobics understand that they are suffering from an irrational fear, but are powerless to override their initial panic reaction.

Graduated Exposure and CBT both work towards the goal of desensitising the sufferer, and changing the thought patterns that are contributing to their panic. Gradual desensitisation treatment and CBT are often extremely successful, provided the phobic is willing to endure some discomfort and to make a continuous effort over a long period of time. Practitioners of neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) claim to have a procedure that can be used to alleviate most specific phobias in a single therapeutic session, though this has not yet been verified scientifically.

Hydrophobia and Photophobia

The term hydrophobia, or fear of water, is usually not a psychological condition at all, but another term for the disease rabies, referring to a common symptom. Likewise photophobia, is a physical complaint, aversion to light due to an inflamed or painful eye or excessively dilated pupils).

Phobias not named -phobia
Penis panic refers to a type of mass hysteria or panic where males grow fearful of removal or shrinking of the penis. Taijin kyofusho (対人恐怖症, TKS, for taijin kyofusho symptoms), is a culture-bound syndrome (cultural disorder, or mental illness) (allegedly) specific to Japan. Fear of hurting or offending other people. Castration anxiety

Non-clinical uses of the term

A number of neologisms have appeared with the suffix -phobia, in which "phobia" is a understood as a negative attitude towards certain categories of people or other things, used in an analogy with the medical usage of the term. Usually these kinds of "phobia" are described as fear, dislike, disapproval, prejudice, hatred, discrimination, or hostility towards the object of the "phobia". Often this attitude is based on prejudices and is a particular case of general xenophobia.

A fear or hatred is not always considered a phobia in the clinical sense because it is believed to be only a symptom of other psychological problems, or the result of ignorance, or of political or social beliefs. In other words, unlike clinical phobias, which are usually qualified with the word "irrational", phobias of attitude usually have roots in social relations.

Below are some of these neologisms:

Afrophobia, fear or dislike of Africans or African culture or people of African ancestry Caucasophobia, fear or dislike of either peoples of Caucasus or people of Caucasian race Christianophobia, fear or dislike of Christians Islamophobia, fear or dislike of Muslims or Islamic culture Ethnophobia, the usage exists in two fairly opposite meanings: fear or dislike of any ethnicity different from one's own, or dislike of one's own nation. Homophobia, fear or dislike of homosexual people Transphobia, fear or dislike of transgender or transsexual people. Xenophobia, fear or dislike of strangers or the unknown, often used to describe nationalistic political beliefs and movements Ephebophobia, irrational fear of adolescents gaining more rights or showing behavioral, emotional or social emancipation Europhobia, a dislike of the political machinery surrounding the European Union.

A number of "anti-" phenomena are considered similar or same to the phenomena above: Anti-Polonism Anti-Semitism