The Useless Digest A Free Weekly dose of Facts, Quotes, History and more - direct to your inbox. A phobia is a persistent, irrational fear that causes a person to feel intense anxiety.
People develop phobias about many things like darkness, social situations, spiders, or blood.
Agoraphobia, one of the most common phobias, involves the fear of open places. A person with agoraphobia feels anxious in places where it would be hard to escape, like being in a crowd, standing in line, being on a bridge or traveling in a car. In extreme cases, they are so immobilized by fear that they become a prisoner in their own home. Broken down by age and gender, the NIMH study found phobias were the most common psychiatric illness among women in all age groups and the second most common illness among men older than 25. In some people, the response to a phobia can be fairly mild.