10 Most Common Phobias

A phobia is an irrational fear that causes immense feelings of anxiety. The treatments for anxiety and phobias have evolved over the last 200 years as the medical professional has found more and more evidence of the very real physical effects of these phobias. Long ago, treatments for anxiety and phobias included burning the sufferers at the stake and even admitting them to insane asylums in hopes of medicating the phobias away. Today, thanks to those medical advances, treatments for anxiety and phobias are more thought out and less aggressive.

The treatments for anxiety began farther back than written history notes. But, the first major evidence of phobias and treatments for anxiety was during the times of the Salem witch trials. Many of the women who were thought to be practicing spells were actually the victims of anxiety disorders and phobias. Counting and repetitive actions, thought to be the actual spells, were found to be witch like activity and the treatments for anxiety (witchcraft) was to burn the witch at the stake.

Moving on in history, the next big age of treatments for anxiety moved out of the stake burning and into the insane asylum. The hidden cultures of people who suffered from phobias were left with a very young medical community. The treatments for anxiety and phobias were all the same. No matter the phobia, the fear or the level of impairment caused by that fear, the treatments for anxiety and phobias remained the same. All phobia sufferers were admitted to insane asylums and left to be over medicated and forgotten.

The next few years saw a huge movement in the mental side of medicine. Where once, treatments for anxiety were thought to only be needed for people who were crazy, treatments for anxiety were now viewed as more acceptable. The medical community learned more about the causes of phobias and anxiety in general and with the increase in people diagnosed with phobias and anxiety, the treatments for anxiety changed.

The new treatments for anxiety included medications, psychological treatments and therapies and life changes in order to move the patient out of the situation causing the anxiety and into a more suitable lifestyle situation. The treatments for anxiety also moved past the normal medical treatments and into the areas of homeopathy and alternative medicine.

With more and more patients suffering from what is still termed a mental condition. The treatments for anxiety evolved with hypnotherapy and homeopathy. Hypnotherapy was used to retrain the brain to fear the phobia less while homeopathy focused on the more natural treatments for anxiety. These new treatments for anxiety opened up the realm of medicine to everyone fearing immensely and lacking the belief in traditional medicine.

The treatments for anxiety have come a long way over the years. From burning at the stake to the less invasive treatments for anxiety, including admission to insane asylums, medications, homeopathy and hypnotherapy.

Read more, of the new methods of treatments for anxiety and phobias.