What is Claustrophobia?

The claustrophobia is one of the more common phobias. The claustrophobia is an anxiety disorder in closed spaces. People with claustrophobia may experience panic symptoms in some cases, such as in an elevator, car, or cabin, or they may be afraid of panic symptoms. The claustrophobia refers to a kind of psychological disease that causes fear in closed spaces. If you want to have fear in elevators, fear in cars and airplanes. It belongs to a manifestation of phobia.

Basic Information

Visiting department

Psychiatry

Common causes

Traumatic experiences in childhood

Common symptoms

Panic, anxiety

Contagious

no

Causes of claustrophobia

There are many reasons for claustrophobia, such as growth experience, personality factors, psychological stress, etc., but the traumatic experience in childhood is closely related to claustrophobia. For example, the unpleasant experience in childhood has suffered psychological damage, and there has been a psychological shadow, which began to affect mental health after adulthood.

Clinical manifestations of claustrophobia

People who are prone to panic attacks usually develop claustrophobia. If panic arises in a closed space, they will be scared because they cannot escape the situation. People with claustrophobia may experience difficulty breathing in indoor venues, theaters, or elevators. Like many other conditions, claustrophobia may result from childhood trauma.

The claustrophobia is generally considered to be a counterexample to the square phobia, but this argument is the result of oversimplification: patients with claustrophobia are afraid to stay in the masses, which is one of the characteristics of the square phobia. Therefore, in a municipal square full of people, claustrophobia and square phobia may be caused at the same time. The specific performance has the following forms:

1. When you enter some special environment, you will have involuntary fear. Including empty squares, crowded public places, closed environments, such as stadiums, shops, theaters, highways, elevators, buses, trains, darkness, etc.

2. Always worried that in this place, you will faint, have a certain illness, lose control, and cannot escape the scene.

3. As long as you are in a fear environment, you will feel a sense of fear of accidents and involuntarily want to escape. If you cannot achieve it, you will be flustered, short of breath, cold sweats, shaking hands and feet, muscle twitching, and even fainting. But once you leave the fear environment, you can return to normal on your own.

Diagnosis of claustrophobia

1. Once in a situation of fear, it will almost certainly trigger an immediate anxiety reaction.

2. Patients understand that their fear is excessive and unreasonable.

3. The patient will escape the situation, or tolerate pain and anxiety,

4. These evasive behaviors, anticipatory anxiety, and the pain in the meantime have severely interfered with the patient's routine life, professional function, and social activities.

5. If the patient is under 18 years of age, the period of symptoms must be at least six months.

6. These problems cannot be better explained by other mental illnesses.

Treatment of claustrophobia

The claustrophobia is a type of phobia, which can be treated according to the general phobia treatment method. Treating claustrophobia is similar to treating other anxiety disorders, and you can take some explanatory psychotherapy or use some anti-anxiety drugs to treat it.

1. Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine

Integrated Chinese and western medicine therapy is a unique medical method and method, which has an important role and a huge impact in the history of world medicine. It is an organic combination of two medical systems to achieve the best compatibility and optimal clinical efficacy . The clinical effect of this therapy is higher than that of western medicine and traditional Chinese medicine. Especially for the prevention and treatment of phobia, it has important clinical significance and high practical value.

2. Drug treatment

Western medicine treatment of phobia is mainly the use of anxiolytics, which is intended to eliminate anxiety and tension in patients. Commonly used drugs are alprazolam, estazolam, nitrazepam, clonazepam, and the like. Tricyclic antidepressants have been reported in the treatment of anti-phobia, but the effect has not yet been definitive.

Due to the different methods in clinical drug treatment, there is no uniform standard for reference. Therefore, the actual situation of patients should be taken into consideration in the process of drug application. In order to obtain good results, we must fully estimate the tolerance of patients to various drugs. The treatment methods are: low-dose maintenance and temporary administration. Refers to giving a small amount of medication in the patient's daily life, and increasing the dose when fear is encountered or before the fear is about to occur.

In addition, the combined use of anxiolytics and antidepressants is more common in the clinic.

3. Psychotherapy

Psychotherapy is the most thoroughly studied in the treatment of phobias, and it is also the most effective treatment.

(1) The doctor who knows the treatment method must first help the patient to establish the confidence of treatment and analyze the object of fear. Point out that the reason for his fear is the lack of cognitive reflection. To overcome fear, he must first have a prophet. We need to help them discover the source of "afraid", understand the content of "afraid", calculate the degree of "afraid", and measure the probability of "afraid". Only in this way can the patient correctly evaluate his position in the environment. This method can also be called "personal positioning method".

(2) Systemic desensitization This is currently considered to be the safest and most effective behavioral treatment for phobia. In this method, the doctor sets the "step" fear value, and exposes the patient to the things and places that cause the fear in a step-by-step manner, so that the patient's senses are gradually stimulated, and the degree of fear of the stimulus is gradually reduced. The symptoms disappeared completely. This method is relatively gentle and easy to accept for patients. The disadvantage is that the treatment time is long and the effect is slow.

(3) Exposure therapy This is a radical behavioral therapy. This method is based on a certain psychological counseling, which puts the patient suddenly before the fear or in the place. It makes him unable to escape, which stimulates his heart to react extremely. After the stimulus, the patient was not harmed by the substantial fear object, thereby establishing the understanding of the fear object and eliminating the fear. The advantage of this method is the rapid healing of the condition. The disadvantage is that the patient must have certain physical conditions, otherwise the patient will be overly afraid and fainted. Therefore, when conducting exposure therapy, it is necessary to have certain rescue knowledge and be equipped with certain rescue equipment.

In addition, some people use drugs to hypnotize, or even directly hypnotize for treatment, there are certain effects, but the clinical requirements are higher, and generally difficult to implement.

4. Self-adjustment

Enhance your sense of security and self-confidence, and strengthen your psychological quality. At the same time, some relaxation training can be done to adjust your nervousness in a timely manner, and try to slowly enter the claustrophobic environment that makes you fear, step by step, slowly desensitization.