[1] It is recommended that specific phobias be treated with exposure therapy, in which the person is introduced to the situation or object in question until the fear resolves.

Fear and anxiety often can overlap but this distinction can help identify subtle differences between disorders, as well as differentiate between a response that would be expected given a person's developmental stage and culture.

These individuals often report dizziness, loss of bladder or bowel control, tachypnea, feelings of pain, and shortness of breath.

The degree to whether environment or genetic influences have a more significant role varies by condition, with social anxiety disorder and agoraphobia having around a 50% heritability rate.

For example, an occupational impairment can result from acrophobia, from not taking a job solely because of its location on the top floor of a building, or socially not participating in an event at a theme park.

The avoidance aspect is defined as behaviour that results in the omission of an aversive event that would otherwise occur, intending to prevent anxiety.

Glucocorticoid receptors in the hippocampus monitor the amount of cortisol in the system and through negative feedback can tell the hypothalamus to stop releasing CRH.

Damage to the cortical areas involved in the limbic system, such as the cingulate cortex or frontal lobes, has resulted in extreme emotion changes.

Through receiving stimulus info, the basolateral nuclei undergo synaptic changes that allow the amygdala to develop a conditioned response to fearful stimuli.

As the phobic person approaches a feared stimulus, anxiety levels increase, and the degree to which the person perceives they might escape from the stimulus affects the intensity of fear in instances such as riding an elevator (e.g. anxiety increases at the midway point between floors and decreases when the floor is reached and the doors open).

The person may still meet criteria for the diagnosis if they continue to avoid or refuse to participate in activities they would involve possible exposure to the phobic stimulus.

Over the past several decades, psychologists and other researchers have developed effective behavioral, pharmacological, and technological interventions for the treatment of phobia.

[36] Virtual Reality treatments produce similar effects to in vivo exposure, another efficacious therapy great for treating phobias.

[37] Cognitive Behavioral Therapy can be beneficial by allowing the person to challenge dysfunctional thoughts or beliefs by being mindful of their feelings to recognize that their fear is irrational.

The use of medications for specific phobias, besides the limited role of benzodiazepines, do not currently have established guidelines due to minimal supporting evidence.

[51] Sedatives such as benzodiazepines (clonazepam, alprazolam) are another therapeutic option, which can help people relax by reducing the amount of anxiety they feel.

Response to treatment as well as remission and relapse rates are impacted by the severity of an individual's disorder as well as how long they have been experiencing symptoms.

In his treatise Sustenance of the Body and Soul, Al Balkhi described phobia as a psychological disorder that may manifest with physical symptoms such as paleness of the skin and trembling of the hands.

Remarkably, Al-Balkhi not only recognised phobias as psychological in nature but also proposed a treatment approach that included cognitive techniques and exposure therapy.

He recommended that individuals gradually expose themselves to feared stimuli and train themselves to tolerate the experience until they reach habituation, an approach that mirrors modern therapeutic techniques for treating phobias.

In the early history of Western medicine, mental and emotional disturbances, including phobias, were often viewed through a physiological lens, with causes linked to physical imbalances.

Galen, a Roman physician, expanded this idea, attributing mental disturbances to bodily humors and brain function.

[citation needed] In the Middle Ages, medical explanations shifted to spiritual causes, with mental disorders seen as linked to demonic possession or divine punishment.

By the Early Modern period (16th–17th centuries), interest in neurology grew, but mental illnesses, including phobias, were still primarily seen as physical conditions.

Treatments like bloodletting or purging were common, reflecting the belief that emotional symptoms stemmed from bodily imbalances rather than psychological processes.

The regular system for naming specific phobias uses prefixes based on a Greek word for the object of the fear, plus the suffix -phobia.

Benjamin Rush's 1786 satirical text, 'On the different Species of Phobia', established the term's dictionary sense of specific morbid fears.

Interventional psychiatry is an additional branch in medicine that has expanded treatment options, and further research continues to explore effectiveness and applications.

A meta‐analysis conducted in 2019 found only two clinical trials for the use of TMS in specific phobias, one of which explored anxiety and avoidance rates in individuals with acrophobia.

[75] D-cycloserine (DCS), a partial N-methyl-D-aspartate agonist, is an additional investigational approach to augmentation specific phobias that a meta-analysis suggested had better outcomes and less symptom severity when utilized before initiating CBT.