Agoraphobia Research Paper

“Nearly 3.2 million Americans (ages 18-54) suffer from agoraphobia according to the National Institute Of Mental Health” (A Guide to Agoraphobia- Facts, 2009). Agoraphobia is an irrational fear produced by having to enter a public place or a place that tends to be concurred by a big amount of people at once, leaving them exposed to humiliating themselves in that position. It is very important to specify that agoraphobia is not a fear of people but of the place or location where these tend to gather in massive amounts. For instance, public transportation, learning centers, streets, etc. are places where a person who suffers from agoraphobia could have a panic attack. Such panic attacks can be very traumatizing for the individual since they may

The first type of symptom found on agoraphobics is constantly having panic attacks when they are at a public place. Which leads us to the second symptom or fear. This is the need to avoid public places. Agoraphobics tend to avoid finding themselves in situations like this because of their fear of encountering themselves having a panic attack. The panic attack may be caused by the fear of embarrassing themselves in front of a large group of people. This last leads us to the second type of symptom, which explains the need they have for always having an “escape plan”, and this is finding a fortress. The way they avoid this is by locking themselves inside their own “fortress” which is often found to be their house. Being this a place where they feel secure. They avoid such situations as standing in lines, using any type of public transportation, being outdoors or being in crowds or just the fact of being away from home as explained by Edncohen (2009). But they may not only look for a safe place to be but a person they can trust and relay on in any type of situation. The final type of symptom is a fear being alone. An individual with agoraphobia will fear finding himself completely alone, even if he is within his fortress or his comfort zone. The reason why they fear being alone is because they are afraid that if they have a panic attack there will be no

In this way, it contrasts with the childhood origin of most simple phobias and the onset in late adolescence of the majority of social phobias” (Marks & Gelder, 1966). Classical conditioning is usually used to explain the way agoraphobia is obtained. In most cases, agoraphobia develops after a panic attack has occurred. After having a panic attack the person creates a fear for this to happen again and embarrass themselves in front of others. Then they begin to avoid the place where the panic attack occurred and later on avoiding places similar to it (generalization). During this panic attacks the individual experiences short breath, numbness, nauseas, and feelings of faintness, dizziness and loss of control. We can see that the symptoms are mental as well as physical. It is vital to remember the article by Cordes (1871) where he makes important observations that anxiety is based on the ideas in the individual’s mind and it is not provoked in a complete automatic way by the stimuli in the environment. For instance, a person who has had a traumatic experience just like a panic attack in a place concurred by a big amount of people such as a train station may create a bond between the panic attack and the train station, hence they will avoid places like the train station believing that a panic attack may occur again although the odds of this happening again are very small. After the first panic attack has occurred most