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Phobias have an immense impact on the life of individuals with the disorder. One aspect is the quality of life of patients. They have lower perception of overall health, their relationships with others, and the world around them. The social functioning of individuals with a phobia are also highly likely to have their daily activities interrupted due to symptoms of their disorder. While individuals with phobias are disrupted in their regular activities, they also experience a decreased level of satisfaction with tasks and activities that they do complete. This also includes the relationships they hold with others. It is important to note that the symptoms of phobias, specifically the decreased quality of social life and well-being lead to a high rate of comorbidity (presence of two or more diseases at once) with other disorders such as depression.

There are two different types of phobias. The first is non-experimental specific phobia and it is caused when a stimuli arouses fear without any previous direct interaction. This type of specific phobia has multiple other factors such as environmental, familial and genetic. It's theorized that the fear is due to classical fear conditioning but continually being reinforced by operant fear conditioning which reinforces avoidance behavior. The second type of specific fear phobia is experimental. Studies have shown that experimental is due to classical fear conditioning occur by combining a neural cue with an aversive event. Afterwards, the cue in the absence of the unconditioned stimulus causes fear. Patients with specific phobias react to phobic stimuli with fear and conscious avoidance of that stimuli. A patient with specific phobia must be aware that the fear is excessive and may lead to a panic attack. Specific phobia is a psychiatric disorder with a lifetime prevalence of 12.5%. The largest areas of the brain that specific phobias affect are in the anterior insula which expresses fear and anxiety, amygdala which regulates emotion, the right frontal cortex which controls language and even extending into the basal ganglia which controls executive functioning and emotions. The right thalamus which is regulation of consciousness and the cerebellum which controls motor movement was also activated while it was seem that there was a deactivation of the right frontal cortex and basal ganglia.

Multiple studies have shown that children with Autism Spectrum Disorder will endure more phobias than the average progressing child. A phobia is described as a fear that is severe enough to acquire a diagnosis. Evidence shows that children with ASD will have a 30-64% chance of developing a phobia, whereas other children see a 5-18% chance. However, children with ASD show more eccentric and unusual phobias that you would not usually see in a typical developing child. Their phobias are associated with auditory and sensory fears, rather than scary stories, spiders, or darkness. Children with ASD also experience difficult behaviors when presented with their specific fear or phobia. They tend to be faced with troublesome vocalizations, like crying or yelling, to express their concerns. It is also common to see them self harm by hitting their head, wringing their hands or biting themselves. It is thought that specific phobias can arise through modeling or observational learning, which psychologists categorize as social factors. The patient may observe others fearing a stimuli and will report those same phobias on self-report scales. These specific anxiety disorders have a high turnaround rate as exposure therapy is most effective. With the use of new modern technologies such as virtual reality, the patient can overcome their phobia(s) through gradual exposure to the fearful stimuli, including group therapy, which is a form of exposure therapy within itself for those who suffer from social phobias.