How common are phobias?

Phobias are extremely common within the population. Women are marginally mmore affected than men with a male to female ratio of 1:2. More that 10% of the population in the United States has some form of phobia. It is the most common mental disorder in the United States.

Social phobia is the third most common psychiatric disorder with a lifetime prevalence of 13%. The diagnosis is appropriate only if the avoidance, fear or anxious anticiipation of encountering the phobic stimulus interferes significantly with the person's daily routine, occupational dunctioning, social life or if the person is markedly distressed about having the phobia.
The Centre for Anxiety Disorders and Trauma(DSMIV 1994)

Traditional exposure therapy can sometimes be an obstacle to treatment. A small amount of people (~20%) are usually too overwhelmed to seek treatment for their phobias because the thought of exposing what they have been avoiding is too much.

Gender Differences

• Phobias affect people of all ages, from all walks of life, and in every part of the country. The American Psychiatric Institute for Research and Education (APIRE) has reported that in any given year, 7.8% of American adults have phobias. They are the most common psychiatric illness among women of all ages and are the second most common illness among men older than 25.

• With the exception of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and the possibly social anxiety, women have twice the risk for most anxiety disorders as men. A number of factors may increase the reported rise in women, including hormonal factors, cultural pressures to meet everyone else's needs except their own, and fewer self-restrictions on reporting anxiety to physicians.

• According to Mind Disorders,There are twice as many women with specific phobia than there are men with this disorder. The gender ratio variable varies depending upon the type of specific phobia. Approximately 75%-90% of people with the animal, situational, and natural environment types are female. Approximately 55%-70% of people with the blood-injection-injury subtype are female. For height phobias, there are fewer women than men than for other specific phobia types; however, illness phobias are more common in men.

• Agrophobia, the fear of open spaces, occurs about twice as commonly among women as it does in men. The gender difference may be attributable to social-cultural factors that encourage, or permit, the greater expression of avoidant coping strategies by women. Other theories include the ideas that woem nare more likely to seek help and therefore be diagnosed, that men are more likely to abuse alcohol as a reaction to anxiety and be diagnosed as an alcoholic, and that traditional female sex roles prescribe women to react to anxiety by engaging in dependent and helpless behaviors. Resarch results have not yet produced a single clear explanation as to the gender differences in agoraphobia (Wikipedia).