Acrophobia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For the online game, see Acrophobia (game).
Acrophobia (from Greek ἄκρος, meaning "summit") is an extreme or irrational fear of heights. It is a particular case of specific phobias, which share both causes (differing in the source of the phobia) and options for treatment.
Acrophobia can be dangerous, as sufferers can experience a panic attack in a high place and become too agitated to get themselves down safely. Some acrophobics also suffer from urges to throw themselves off high places, despite not being suicidal.
"Vertigo" is often used, incorrectly, to describe the fear of heights, but it is more accurately described as a spinning sensation.
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[edit] Causes of acrophobia
The most widely accepted explanation is that acrophobia stems from fear — fear of falling and being injured or killed: this is a normal and rational fear that most people have (people without such fears would die out).
A phobia occurs when fear is taken to an extreme — possibly through conditioning or a traumatic experience. Then, the mind seeks to protect the body from further trauma in the future, and elicits an extreme fear of the situation — in this case, heights.
This extreme fear can be counter-productive in normal everyday life though, with some sufferers being afraid to go up a flight of stairs or a ladder, or to stand on a chair, table, (etc.).
Some neurologists question the prevailing wisdom and argue that acrophobia is caused by dysfunction in maintaining balance and that the anxiety is both well founded and secondary. According to the dysfunction model, a normal person uses both vestibular and visual cues appropriately in maintaining balance. An acrophobic overrelies on visual signals whether because of inadequate vestibular function or incorrect strategy. Locomotion at a high elevation requires more than normal visual processing. The visual cortex becomes overloaded and the person becomes confused. Some proponents of the alternate view of acrophobia warn that it may be ill-advised to encourage acrophobics to expose themselves to height without first resolving the vestibular issues. Research is underway at several clinics. [1] [2]
[edit] Notable people with acrophobia
[edit] Popular culture
- Vertigo — a film by Alfred Hitchcock in which detective John "Scottie"/"Johnny Oh" Ferguson (James Stewart) , a police officer, feels vertigo and becomes acrophobic after losing his partner in a high fall
- Monk - Adrian Monk has acrophobia
- High Anxiety — a spoof by Mel Brooks in which the main character, a leading psychiatrist, is acrophobic, but throughout the film the disorder is medically referred to as "high anxiety"
- In The Muppet Christmas Carol, Rizzo the Rat claims that he is acrophobic.
- In Code Lyoko, Ulrich Stern has an extreme case of acrophobia which throughout the episode is incorrectly stated as vertigo.
