Claustrophobia is one of a set of psychological or behavioral disorders known as simple phobias. Simple phobias involve persistent fear of a circumscribed stimulus other than the fear of having a panic attack (such as is found in a panic disorder) or of humiliation or embarrassment in social situations (as is seen in social phobia). The most common phobias involve fear of animals, particularly dogs, snakes, insects, and mice, while other common phobias involve closed spaces (claustrophobia) or heights (acrophobia). Phobic persons always recognize that their fears are irrational or unrealistic but are unable to control their reaction. Simple phobias are best treated with behavioral therapy, and drugs alone are not effective (Kline, 1996).
Prince (1993) notes that culture is a universal feature of the human environment (Prince, 1993, 55), and he then discusses various culture-bound syndromes that may develop. Many of the syndromes we describe in Western psychiatry are culture-bound and not universal as we might expect if we did not do cultural comparisons. The concept of the phobia, for instance, is a culture-bound issue. Prince notes that Freud had separated some common phobias of things feared by most Westerners to some extent (death, illness, and snakes, for example) from specific phobias of things or situations inspiring no fear in the average Westerner, such as fear of public places. In Japan and Korea, social phobias are separated from agoraphobia and the host of other simple phobias. Social phobias are cultural because in Japan, for instance, offending or hurting may occur in many ways they would not occur, or at least not in the same degree or with the same frequency, in Western culture (Prince, 1993, 59-61).
Anxiety disorders comprise a group of syndromes including panic disorder with or without agoraphobia, generalized anxiety disorder, simple and social phobias, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and post-traum...