Phobia News and Research

RSS

Fears are a common part of an individual’s life. However, a phobia is more than a simple fear. It starts and develops into something massive when the affected person begins to organise their life around avoiding the feared object – be it an animal, insect, place, situation or just about anything.

Virtual reality app trial offers new hope for people suffering from phobias

Results from a University of Otago, Christchurch trial suggest fresh hope for the estimated one-in-twelve people worldwide suffering from a fear of flying, needles, heights, spiders and dogs.

14 Jul 2022

Addressing parents' hesitancy to vaccinate their children against COVID

Researchers examine notable risk factors related to vaccine hesitancy among parents.

23 Jun 2022

J&J-vaxxed, mRNA-boosted, and pondering a third shot

Yes, we are all exhausted by the covid pandemic. Flummoxed by the constantly shifting science and guidelines. Worried about a succession of scary new variants, each with its own name, like hurricanes.

1 Mar 2022

Study sheds light on the consequences of picky eating in college students

Looking beyond the picky eating of childhood, researchers looked at this behavior in college students. Self-identified picky eaters ate significantly less fiber and vegetables and reported greater levels of social phobia than non-picky eaters, according to a new study in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, published by Elsevier.

7 Oct 2021

Smartphone-based augmented reality app helps tackle the fear of spiders

Researchers from the University of Basel have developed an augmented reality app for smartphones in order to help people reduce their fear of spiders.

20 Sep 2021

Dentists chip away at uninsured problem by offering patients membership plans

Nevada dentist David White has seen diseased and rotted teeth in the mouths of patients who routinely put off checkups and avoided minor procedures such as fillings. While dental phobia is a factor, White said, the overriding reason people avoid treatment is cost.

17 Sep 2021

Researchers identify factors that explain individuals’ stress while driving

Admit it: Daily commutes - those stops, the starts, all that stress - gets on your last nerve.

11 May 2021

One in five adults suffers from dental anxiety or phobia in Sweden

In Sweden, approximately one in five adults suffers from dental anxiety or phobia. The number has decreased over time, but still, an important part of the population has major problems, according to a recent doctoral thesis from the University of Gothenburg.

22 Feb 2021

FDA announces requirement of class-wide labeling changes for benzodiazepines

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced today in a Drug Safety Communication that it is requiring an update to the Boxed Warning, the agency's most prominent safety warning, and requiring class-wide labeling changes for benzodiazepines to include the risks of abuse, misuse, addiction, physical dependence and withdrawal reactions to help improve their safe use.

23 Sep 2020

Google searches for anxiety skyrocket amid coronavirus pandemic

Just like physical health, it is important to check one’s mental health amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. When countries announced lockdown orders, many people were confined to their homes, away from family and friends.

25 Aug 2020

New partnership advances virtual reality for social anxiety disorder

BehaVR, a leading innovator of virtual reality digital wellness and digital therapeutics experiences, today announced that it has begun a new partnership aimed at leveraging virtual reality experiences to address critical unmet needs in social anxiety disorder, an underreported and undertreated mental health condition.

6 Aug 2020

Cognitive behavioral therapy helps food allergic children with severe phobia of anaphylaxis

Imagine a young girl with a peanut allergy, so stricken by fear of anaphylaxis that she no longer takes part in everyday activities many children take for granted.

28 Jul 2020

Effects of chronic stress associated with increased inflammatory signaling within brain circuits

Anxiety and depression are significantly heightened during times of great stress such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

4 Jun 2020

Individuals with social anxiety disorder show large differences in personality traits

Individuals with social anxiety disorder have markedly different personality traits than others. Emotional instability and introversion are hallmarks, according to a new study from Uppsala University published in PLOS ONE.

29 Apr 2020

Study shows efficacy of parent-based treatment for childhood anxiety

A study in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, published by Elsevier, reports that an entirely parent-based treatment, SPACE (Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions), is as efficacious as individual cognitive-behavioral therapy for the treatment of childhood and adolescent anxiety disorders.

2 Apr 2020

NICU babies have higher risk of mental health problems in later life

Children who spend time in a neonatal intensive care unit at birth have a higher risk of mental health issues later, regardless of their birth weight, say McMaster University researchers.

28 Jan 2020

A small region of the brain represents all our emotions

The entire set of our emotions is topographically represented in a small region of the brain, a 3 centimeters area of the cortex, report scientists in a study conducted at the IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, Italy.

24 Jan 2020

Specialized psychiatric care helps woman with bipolar depression to achieve motherhood

Rebecca Jo Manzella, 31, of Mount Clemens, was diagnosed with bipolar depression her junior year of high school. Lithium, the medication doctors prescribed for her, was the game changer. Its therapeutic benefits allowed her to return to her studies and continue to maintain healthy relationships with family and friends.

6 Aug 2019

Stress may cause vocal disorders

Do you feel anxious about talking in front of the crowd and feel as if there’s a frog in your throat? New reseach says that stress may be the culprit for such vocal issues.

25 Jul 2019

Anorexia may be as much a metabolic disorder as it is a psychiatric one, say scientists

A study has found that anorexia nervosa may have a metabolic component that makes some patients lose weight more easily and be harder to treat.

16 Jul 2019