Fear of injections or Trypanophobia

For many, the trip to the hospital or the clinic is a trip they are hoping to avoid. This is simply because most of us are afraid of medical instruments, most especially anything that has needles on it. Well, blame it on our parents and Hollywood.

Needles are eternally utilized by parents to instill fear in us and it is always attached to warning. For instance, the line “Do not go there. If you do, there are people there who will inject you and that is really painful” never fails to elicit terror and dread in us most of us heed the warning.

Movies never fall short in showcasing the syringe as an evil tool used by evil doctors and clinicians in their evil deeds. And that is what made most of us what we are today – in fear of injections or suffering from trypanophobia.

Trypanophobia is associated with many types of phobias like enetophobia, belonephobia, or aichmophobia but all these only refer to fear specific to needles and pins and does not cover the medical aspect of the fear compared to the former. This type of phobia, to be precise, would be the type of irrational and extreme alarm and trepidation one feels about hypodermic needles and injections.

Medically, the term is rarely used and the words utilized in its replacement are needle phobia. And the odd thing about this type of phobia is that the percentage of people affected by this across the country is about 10%, a huge number of people.

And this is the recorded tally. It is believed that there are many more cases unrecorded since these people have not proceeded to any medical procedure for fear of inoculations and blood tests and any medical process that involves needles.

Dr. James Hamilton, a leading expert on needle phobia inferred that this type of phobia may have gone down through the ages since ancient people (for good measure) the less the skin is pierced (like for example stab wounds), the chances of survival becomes high.

Now, to be able to combat this phobia, one has to learn and understand the different types of needle phobia in order to have a better scope of what transpires when an individual has it. The following its variations:

• Associative needle phobia affects people who have witnessed other people with shocking and disturbing experiences with medical procedures including needles. The effect would be lack of sleep, extreme anxiety, and preoccupation in an upcoming medical procedure.

• Now you may have seen comedic situations in movies and the television regarding people fainting upon the sight of medical needles. This reaction is not far-fetched. In fact it is what is medically termed as vasovagal needle phobia.