Phobias
Phobias are the most common type of anxiety disorder, with the National Institute of Mental Health estimating that about 10 percent of people in the U.S. suffer from some type of phobia. Through this disorder, a person experiences an extreme or irrational fear of a place, object, animal, or situation. Most people develop subtle fears throughout their lives — they’ll ask a spouse to kill a spider rather than doing it themselves or avoid roller coaster rides that take them to unusual heights. Fears such as these cross the line into phobia, however, when a person begins to organize his or her life around avoiding the object of the fear.