Phobias Fear is a normal and important human reaction to something dangerous, it keeps us out of danger, because the fear is not welcome and we do our best to avoid the object or situation of fear. It causes physical changes known as the fight-or-flight response, which cause an increase in blood pressure and an acceleration of the heart rate to pump blood to the large muscles used to escape. To balance this, the human body is equipped with sweat glands that produce sweat. to refresh the body. Young people usually experience more fear than adults (Metcalf). When you are afraid of something, you normally don't spend much time thinking about it, and it only affects you when you are forced to face it. Almost everyone is afraid of something, but about 18% (Metcalf) of all Americans are plagued by irrational fears that interfere with their daily lives. These irrational fears are called phobia and there is a fine line between phobia and fear. Doctors consider phobia to be a type of anxiety disorder, as anxiety refers to a feeling of nervousness, worry, or stress about something that will happen in the future. Anxiety disorders are estimated to 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 you worry about something that might happen. You spend a lot of time thinking about fear and trying to avoid it, and usually when thinking about the phobic situation people literally think about thoughts that scare them, they are usually not consciously aware of the scary thoughts, they are just aware of the feelings they feel ... middle of paper ... instead of going to therapy some people decide to take drugs. Several medications are used to treat specific phobias by controlling symptoms and helping to prevent panic attacks, such as anxiolytics and blood pressure medications, called "beta blockers" and normally used for social phobia. The medications reduce overstimulation, thus controlling the physical symptoms of anxiety. The patient must therefore be aware of the fact that drugs treat the symptoms of the phobia, but do not eliminate the causes and the phobia itself. The costs caused by phobias are high. Anxiety disorders, including phobia, cost America more than $42 billion annually, of which 2% are pharmaceutical costs, 31% are total direct costs of psychiatric treatments, 10% are total workplace costs, 3% are mortality costs, and 54% are direct costs for non-psychiatric medical care (Metcalf).