Fear of crossing streets

Pedestrian crosswalk

The fear of crossing streets, or its terms dromophobia and agyrophobia, is a specific phobia that affects a person's ability to cross a street or roadway, especially designated crosswalks where many cars or vehicles may be present. The term dromophobia comes from the Greek dromos, meaning racetrack.

Causes of dromophobia

Dromophobia may result from experiencing a road accident and thus may be classified as a subtype of panic disorder with agoraphobia (PDA).[1] As such, dromophobia, especially fear of crossing streets alone may be a component of accident-related posttraumatic stress disorder, as a reaction to a situation reminding the past traumatic event.[2][3] Sometimes this behavior may be misinterpreted during PTSD symptom assessment as a caution (i.e., a normal learning behavior) rather than fear (which is an abnormal avoidant behavior). [4]

Fear of crossing streets may also result from an anticipatory anxiety related to person's limited mobility due to stiff person syndrome (SPS). In fact a person with SPS crossing a street may develop attacks of increasing stiffness or spasms.[5]

Dromophobia may be present in people, especially children, with autism, since crossing a road involves complex skills, such as judging the speed of an approaching car.[6]

See also

Further reading

  • Szasz, Thomas. A Lexicon of Lunacy. Transaction Publishers, 1993. ISBN 9781560000655. p 66.

References

  1. ↑ Page, Andrew (1994). "Distinguishing Panic Disorder and Agoraphobia from Social Phobia". Journal of Nervous & Mental Disease. 182 (11).
  2. ↑ Kuch, Klaus (November–December 1995). "A Brief Self-Rating Scale for PTSD After Road Vehicle Accident". Journal of Anxiety Disorders. 9 (6): 503–514.
  3. ↑ Keppel-Benson, Jane M.; Ollendick, Thomas H.; Benson, Mark J. (February 2002). "Post-Traumatic Stress in Children Following Motor Vehicle Accidents". Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. 43 (2): 203–212. doi:10.1111/1469-7610.00013.
  4. ↑ Scheeringa, Michael S. (2011). "PTSD in Children Younger than the Age of 13". Journal of Child & Adolescent Trauma. 4 (3): 181–197. doi:10.1080/19361521.2011.597079. Also in: Assessment of Trauma in Youths. 2016. pp. 21–36. ISBN 1134905963 – via Google Books.
  5. ↑ Rodrigues de Cerqueira, Ana Claudia; Ferreira Becerra, José Marcelo; Rozentha, Márcia; Emídio Nardi, Antônio (August 2010). "Stiff-Person Syndrome and Generalized Anxiety Disorder". Arquivos de Neuro-Psiquiatria. 68 (4). doi:10.1590/S0004-282X2010000400036.
  6. ↑ Strickland, Dorothy (1996). "A Virtual Reality Application with Autistic Children". Presence. MIT Press Journals. 5 (3): 319–329. doi:10.1162/pres.1996.5.3.319.
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