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Phobia

© Sandra Linville

After the August 1999 theatrical release of The Blair Witch Project, it's possible that many movie-goers began suffering from hylophobia (fear of forests), nyctohylophobia (fear of dark wooded areas, of forests at night) or wiccaphobia (fear of witches and witchcraft). Perhaps James Bond should develop caligynephobia or venustraphobia (fear of beautiful women). Many other movies and books may have been responsible for many other phobias, such as arachnaphobia (fear of spiders), emetophobia (fear of vomiting), herpetophobia (fear of reptiles or creepy, crawly things), illyngophobia (fear of vertigo or feeling dizzy when looking down), lilapsophobia (fear of tornadoes and hurricanes), myxophobia (fear of slime), nucleomituphobia (fear of nuclear weapons), odontophobia (fear of teeth or dental surgery), ophidiophobia (fear of snakes), ornithophobia (fear of birds), or pteromerhanophobia (fear of flying).

That is just a sliver of the many-named phobias. Fredd Culbertson has compiled a phobia list at his web site which includes any name that appears in a reference book and he also accepts submissions. He does admit that some names are created by readers and are just too fun not to include (even though they may not appear in any reference book).

According to the January 1999 issue of Current Health 2, "approximately 26 million Americans have some kind of phobia and many more have had phobias as some point in their lives." The Anxiety Disorders Association of America counts phobias as a category of anxiety disorders and further breaks down the phobias into three segments: social phobia, specific phobia, and agoraphobia, which "is the fear of being caught in a place where help would be unavailable or escape would be difficult or embarrassing should a panic attack occur."

Even though the social phobia diagnosis entered medical manuals in the early 1980s; it was the mid-1990s before it received much attention. Social phobia is more than shyness. According to The Futurist (December 1998), social phobia occurs in eight percent of the adult population and in five percent of children in the United States. "The psychological disorder is considered as one of the most common mental disabilities in the U.S., third only to depression and substance abuse."

"Some nations are more shy than others," according to psychologist Bernardo Carducci, director of the Shyness Research Institute at Indiana University-Southeast. About half of all Americans describe themselves as shy, although nationally the Japanese are the shyest, with more than six in 10 saying they are shy. Israelis are the world's brassiest: Only 31 percent describe themselves as shy, compared with 39 percent of Mexicans, who rank second in social fearlessness." (Source: "Shy Nations" by Richard Morin, The Washington Post, September 6, 1998)

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