What is Agoraphobia

Agoraphobia (synonym topofobiya, from the Greek agore – Market Square, phobos – fear) – a kind of obsessive fear, expressed in fear of empty spaces that occurs when passing broad open spaces, squares also close to it situations such as the presence of the crowd and the inability to immediately return to a safe place. Thus, agoraphobia involves a whole set of interrelated and usually overlapping phobias, the fear out of the house: the entrance, the crowd or public places or traveling alone in trains, buses or planes. Despite the fact that the intensity of anxiety and severity of avoidant behavior may be different, this is the most desadapting of phobic disorders, and some patients become completely housebound.

What triggers Agoraphobia:

There is psychogenic in people with a well-developed imagination, often in women. In an analytic sense, fear is associated with aggression, fear or prosecution.

Pathogenesis (what’s going on?) During Agoraphobia:

The start of the disorder usually occurs in early adulthood. Starting as a fear of open spaces, symptoms are enriched with the fear of crowd, inability to immediately return to a safe place (home), fear of traveling alone in traffic. As a result, patients disadapt and become housebound. Lack of immediate access to the output dramatically increases the fear. During an undulating, it tends to be chronic. In the absence of effective treatment of agoraphobia it often becomes chronic, though usually flows in waves.

Symptoms of agoraphobia:

Fear of open spaces, crowds and the inability to return to a safe place, fear of losing consciousness in a public place, the lack of immediate access to the exit. The manifestations may precede depressive episodes. There may also be present obsessional symptoms and social phobias, but they do not dominate the clinical picture. Fear has features of obsessive-compulsiveness, after leaving the state often have fear of being scared (fobofobiya), accompanied by an autonomic response. This can lead to problems in the relationship with others, since the patient’s avoidance extends to people who had associated with open space.

Diagnosis of Agoraphobia:

Diagnosis
Anxiety or fear must be limited to only (or mainly) by two of the following situations: (a) the crowd or public place, moving away from home, (b) traveling alone.
Phobic situation is avoided, and the psychological or autonomic symptoms must be the primary expression of anxiety, and not be secondary to other symptoms such as delusions or obsessions.
Avoidance of phobic situations it is or it has been a pronounced symptom.
The presence or absence of panic disorder (trying to leave the scene abruptly of fear) in most cases falling in agoraphobic situations without agoraphobia shares agoraphobia without a panic disorder and agoraphobia with panic disorder

Differential diagnosis. It should be differentiated from depressive episode, if by the time the phobia was a distinct depression, and also organic anxiety-phobic disorder. At present depressive episode, there are other criteria for depression, and organics can be excluded by additional research methods. Symptoms of agoraphobia may also be secondary in delirium, or obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Treatment of Agoraphobia:
Dissynthesis and other methods of behavior therapy, hypnotherapy, auditory training, meditation training and psychoanalysis. Used tricyclic antidepressants, monoamine oxidase inhibitors, alprazolam, and fluoxetine