Collection · 12 entries
Medical and Dental Fears
Most phobias cost the person a walk in the woods or a seat by the window. This group costs them the detection of whatever is wrong with them, which is why it is collected separately. Somebody avoiding spiders loses a walk. Somebody avoiding doctors loses the diagnosis. Dental fear runs the same loop faster and more visibly: avoiding the dentist produces the painful problem that eventually forces an emergency appointment, and the emergency appointment teaches the fear again.
The set also holds the entries where the fear leaves its mark in somebody else's records rather than in the person's own life. White coat syndrome is not a phobia and belongs here because it is the only entry here where a fear produces a number in a clinician's notes, in between fifteen and thirty per cent of people. Scanxiety has 57 studies and 81 measurement tools between them, reporting prevalence anywhere from 0 to 83 per cent depending on which was used, which is a finding about the instruments rather than about the patients. Vaccine hesitancy is real everywhere and changes its object at the border. The order runs from the procedures a person meets often to the ones they meet once, and it closes on the two entries where what is feared is a result rather than a needle.
Hand-set, never alphabetical
The set, in order
12 entries
- Fear of NeedlesThe commonest of these, and the one where the body faints instead of fleeing, with consequences for vaccination and blood donation.
- Fear of the DentistThe fear that manufactures its own evidence: avoidance produces the emergency appointment that teaches it again.
- Fear of DoctorsThe fear whose avoidance behaviour is itself the danger, because what is lost is the detection rather than the walk.
- Fear of Medical ProceduresThe broad term, formally defined as any experience involving medical personnel or procedures, and mostly fading in adulthood untreated.
- Fear of BloodWhere the sight rather than the procedure is enough, and where the faint is most likely.
- Fear of HospitalsBuilt on a fear that has a name in infection control: going in healthy and coming out infected.
- Fear of SurgeryAn event most people meet rarely, which makes inexperience its main ingredient, and children and adults fear different parts of it.
- Fear of Taking MedicationCreated by prescribing and prevented by prescribing: the dose that produced the reaction, and the dose that avoids it.
- Fear of VaccinesReal everywhere, with its object changing at the border: autism in English, multiple sclerosis in French.
- Scanxiety57 studies and 81 measurement tools reporting prevalence from 0 to 83 per cent, which says more about the instruments than the patients.
- White Coat SyndromeNot a phobia, and the only entry here where a fear produces a number in somebody else's records.
- Health AnxietyWhere the feared thing is a result rather than a procedure, and where the fear is associated with dying earlier.
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The other collections
- Words That Are Not PhobiasPhotophobia, homophobia, xenophobia, chromophobia. Where the suffix does scientific, political or sociological work instead of naming a fear.
- Most Common PhobiasSpiders, heights, flying, the dentist, public speaking: the phobias most often called common, each with the prevalence figure the claim rests on.
- One Word, Two Different FearsAerophobia, phonophobia, basophobia: terms carrying two unrelated senses, with the collision traced and the usable meaning named.
- Phobias in the DSM-5Animal, natural environment, blood-injection-injury, situational and other: one entry per DSM-5 type, plus the fears the manual filed somewhere else.