Causes and Classifications of Phobias

            A phobia is an overwhelming fear of an object, action or a certain group that is seen exhibited in a person that in reality proves no true danger. Phobias can be for a variety of things varying from flying in a plane, being in an open area or fear of being surrounded by clowns. While there are a variety of different phobias exhibited around the world, much is still unknown about phobias, however a few different interesting concepts of how people gain phobias have been found, such as age, gender, family life and traumatic events. Throughout this paper I will show how phobias can be caused, different symptoms seen depending on the phobia and the results of these phobias. (Mayo Clinic, 2011).
             Although prior family and twin studies have examined the relationship between the genetic and environmental risk factors for pairs of psychiatric disorders, the interrelationship between these classes of risk factors for a broad range of psychiatric disorders remains largely unknown. (Kendler et al, 1995) However from these studies, psychologists have noticed four major contributors to making it more likely to gain a phobia, which include: your current age, your gender, family fears, as well as if you suffered a traumatic incident. (Mayo Clinic, 2011) If one is under the age of 25 the likelihood of a social phobia, which I will cover later on, as well as several situational phobias including tunnels, bridges and flying. As age affects the different types of phobias you will be more likely to gain, your gender has been seen to change your odds as well: if you are female you are more likely to gain a phobia and demonstrate anxiety, unlike a male who is more likely to hide his anxiety and not accept that he has a phobia. It has also been noted throughout these studies that family fears seem to also pass down genetically from parent to children, which raises an interesting concept that perhaps phobias are truly determined based off how your genetic code is constructed, or possibly once you gain a fear for something it permanently embeds said fear into your genetic code.