PhobiasFear is a normal and important human reaction to something dangerous, it keeps us out of danger, because fear is not liked and we do our best to avoid the object or the fear situation. This causes physical changes known as the fight-or-flight response, which causes blood pressure to increase and heart rate to pump blood to the large muscles used for flight. To balance this, the human body has sweat glands that produce perspiration. to cool the body. Usually, young people experience more fear than adults (Metcalf). When we're afraid of something, we don't normally spend a lot of time thinking about it, and it only affects us when we're forced to face it. Almost everyone is afraid of something, but about 18% (Metcalf) of all Americans are tormented by irrational fears that interfere with their daily lives. These irrational fears are called phobias, and there is a fine line between phobia and fear. Doctors consider phobia to be a type of anxiety disorder because anxiety refers to feeling nervous, worried, or stressed about something happening in the future. Thus, it is estimated that anxiety disorders affect 13 out of 100 children and adolescents aged 9 to 17, about half of whom also suffer from a second mental or behavioral disorder, such as social phobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder or depression. (Metcalf). A phobia is the fear of a fear itself, meaning that one is worried about something that might happen. We spend a lot of time thinking about fear and trying hard to avoid it, and usually when thinking about the phobic situation, people literally have thoughts that scare them, usually they are not consciously aware scary thoughts, they are just aware of the feelings I... middle of paper ...... instead of going to therapy, some people decide to take medication. Several medications are used to treat specific phobias by controlling symptoms and helping prevent panic attacks, such as anti-anxiety medications and blood pressure medications, called "beta blockers" and normally used for social phobia. Medication reduces overstimulation, thereby controlling the physical symptoms of anxiety. The patient should therefore be aware that medications treat the symptoms of the phobia, but do not eliminate the causes or the phobia itself. The costs of phobias are high. Anxiety disorders, including phobia, cost America more than $42 billion annually, of which 2% are pharmaceutical costs, 31% are total direct psychiatric treatment costs, 10% are total on-site costs. workplace, 3% are mortality costs and 54%. are direct costs of non-psychiatric medical treatments (Metcalf).