A New Drug for Acrophobia - the Fear of Heights

When you have a fear of flying, the experts don't actually treat you with medicines to help you. They expose you to the thing you fear in small and bearable installments. When it comes to a fear of heights, this kind of hair of the dog treatment is what has traditionally found favor. Exposing yourself to the thing feared in small and gradually escalated doses, as the psychologists see it, is what is supposed to help you overcome any irrational fear. People who suffer from any of these phobias, when they are put through these gradual courses of exposure often fervently wish that there were some kind of pill that they could just take and be done with it - instead of being forced to confront the thing they fear head on. As luck would have it, such a thing actually has come about now for those with the fear of heights.

The drug is a hormone that kind of helps the mind cope with a fear of heights. A person with a phobia, trying to go through a traditional behavioral modification course that exposes him to experiences of being at a height, is apparently greatly helped when he is given doses of a stress hormone called cortisol. When a person afflicted with an irrational fear of something is exposed to the source of his fear, his mind generally reacts by freezing. The stress hormone cortisol makes it difficult for the mind to shut down. It helps a person stay awake, alert, aware and in action.

About one in ten Americans suffer from one form of phobia or another; and one in three try cognitive behavioral therapy or some other form of treatment to help cope. The aim of the therapist in such a course of treatment, generally, is to help a phobic by getting them to think about the thing they fear in a different way. They want to train their brains to think about the object of their fears and see no more than what really is. Many clinics try to use virtual reality to make a treatment course more effective; they place the phobic patient in a virtual environment where they are faced with fleeting bits of exposure to the thing they fear. Since they know that the thing feared is virtual and not real, it helps them think and get a grip.

Acrophobics, people who suffer from a fear of heights, when they are placed in a virtual reality environment high up in the air an hour after they've been given shots of cortisol, are very clearly able to avoid the crushing fear and any need to leave the environment. They are able to stand there in spite of their fear and think about what they're doing. It speeds up the process of a cure considerably.

While work is still in progress on this, if you are seeing a doctor for your fear of heights, you should probably ask about his opinion on the use of cortisol.