This is a group of disorders in which anxiety is evoked only, or predominantly, in certain well defined situations which are not inherently dangerous.
Fears may be considered phobias, when anxiety is sufficiently intense to handicap the individual in his or her everyday life. Phobias often lead to avoidance behaviour.
A phobia may be defined loosely as an abnormal fear, but in this context it refers to:
An irrational fear without a tendency to avoid the specific situation is not a phobia. Therefore abnormal fears of internal stimuli i.e. "illness phobias" or "obsessional phobias" such as a "cancer phobia", do not conform to the stricter definition of a phobia and are better recognised as hypochondriasis or obsessional thoughts.
A phobic response is very similar to a panic attack, the principle distinction being that of the stimulus - apparent in phobia, not apparent or non-specific in panic attacks.
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