Тар кеңістіктерден қорқу қырысымы

Fear of small spaces

Claustrophobia is a fear of confined spaces. It is triggered by many situations or stimuli, including elevators, especially when crowded to capacity, windowless rooms, and hotel rooms with closed doors and sealed windows. Even bedrooms with a lock on the outside, small cars, and tight necked clothing can induce a response in those with claustrophobia. It is typically classified as an anxiety disorder, which often results in panic attacks. The onset of claustrophobia has been attributed to many factors, including a reduction in the size of the amygdala, classical conditioning, or a genetic predisposition to fear small spaces. One study indicates that anywhere from five to ten percent of the world population is affected by severe claustrophobia, but only a small percentage of these people receive some kind of treatment for the disorder. The term claustrophobia comes from Latin claustrum "a shut in place" and Greek φόβος, phóbos, "fear".

Claustrophobia is classified as an anxiety disorder. Symptoms generally develop during childhood or adolescence. although the onset can come at any point in an individual's life. Such an experience can occur multiple times, or only once, to make a permanent impression on the mind. The majority of claustrophobic participants in an experiment done by Lars Göran Öst reported that their phobia had been "acquired as a result of a conditioning experience." In most cases, claustrophobia seems to be the result of past experiences.

There is research that suggests that claustrophobia is not entirely a classically conditioned or learned phobia. It is not necessarily an inborn fear, but it is very likely what is called a prepared phobia. As Erin Gersley says in "Phobias: Causes and Treatments", humans are genetically predisposed to become afraid of things that are dangerous to them. Claustrophobia may fall under this category because of its "wide distribution early onset and seeming easy acquisition, and its non cognitive features". The acquisition of claustrophobia may be part of a vestigial evolutionary survival mechanism, Hostile environments in the past would have made this kind of pre programmed fear necessary, and so the human mind developed the capacity for "efficient fear conditioning to certain classes of dangerous stimuli". This brings about a prepared phobia, which is not quite innate, but is widely and easily learned. As Rachman explains in the article: "The main features of prepared phobias are that they are very easily acquired, selective, stable, biologically significant, and probably [non cognitive]." 'Selective' and 'biologically significant' mean that they only relate to things that directly threaten the health, safety, or survival of an individual. 'Non cognitive' suggests that these fears are acquired unconsciously. Both factors point to the theory that claustrophobia is a prepared phobia that is already pre programmed into the mind of a human being.

This method was developed in 1979 by interpreting the files of patients diagnosed with claustrophobia and by reading various scientific articles about the diagnosis of the disorder. Once an initial scale was developed, it was tested and sharpened by several experts in the field. Today, it consists of 20 questions that determine anxiety levels and desire to avoid certain situations. Several studies have proved this scale to be effective in claustrophobia diagnosis.

This method was developed by Rachman and Taylor, two experts in the field, in 1993. This method is effective in distinguishing symptoms stemming from fear of suffocation. In 2001, it was modified from 36 to 24 items by another group of field experts. This study has also been proven very effective by various studies. It is also thought to be particularly effective in combating disorders where the patient doesn't actually fear a situation but, rather, fears what could result from being in such a situation.

This method forces patients to face their fears by complete exposure to whatever fear they are experiencing. In fact, estimates say that anywhere from 4–20% of patients refuse to go through with the scan for precisely this reason. One study estimates that this percentage could be as high as 37% of all MRI recipients. Another case study investigated the effectiveness of virtual reality subjection in the case of a patient who was diagnosed with two particular phobias (claustrophobia and storms). Participant met DSM IV criteria for two specific phobias, situational type (claustrophobia) and natural environment type (storms). She suffered from fear of closed spaces, such as buses, elevators, crowds, and planes, which began after a crowd trampled her in a shopping mall 12 years prior. In response to this event, she developed the specific phobia, natural environment type (storms) because the cause of the stampede was the racket of a big storm. Participant was assigned to two individual VR environments to distinguish the levels of difficulty in a "claustrophobic" environment, with one setting being a house and the other being an elevator. There was a total of eight sessions that were carried out over the span of 30 days, with each session lasting between 35 and 45 minutes. The results from this treatment proved to be successful in reducing the fear of enclosed spaces and additionally improved over the course of 3 months.

Many experts who have studied claustrophobia claim that it consists of two separable components: fear of suffocation and fear of restriction. In an effort to fully prove this assertion, a study was conducted by three experts in order to clearly prove a difference. The study was conducted by issuing a questionnaire to 78 patients who received MRIs. The data was compiled into a "fear scale" of sorts with separate subscales for suffocation and confinement. Theoretically, these subscales would be different if the contributing factors are indeed separate. The study was successful in proving that the symptoms are separate. Therefore, according to this study, in order to effectively combat claustrophobia, it is necessary to attack both of these underlying causes. However, because this study only applied to people who were able to finish their MRI, those who were unable to complete the MRI were not included in the study. It is likely that many of these people dropped out because of a severe case of claustrophobia. Therefore, the absence of those who suffer the most from claustrophobia could have skewed these statistics.

This study was conducted on 98 people, 49 diagnosed claustrophobics and 49 "community controls" to find out if claustrophobics' minds are distorted by "anxiety arousing" events (i. e. claustrophobic events) to the point that they believe those events are more likely to happen. Each person was given three events—a claustrophobic event, a generally negative event, and a generally positive event—and asked to rate how likely it was that this event would happen to them. As expected, the diagnosed claustrophobics gave the claustrophobic events a significantly higher likelihood of occurring than did the control group. There was no noticeable difference in either the positive or negative events. However, this study is also potentially flawed because the claustrophobic people had already been diagnosed. Diagnosis of the disorder could likely bias one's belief that claustrophobic events are more likely to occur to them.