by Elisabeth Peters
I come across many different types of anxiety in children, but today I would like to talk about Nosocomephobia. This term doesn’t sound familiar to most people and it is better known as hospital anxiety.
Nosocomephobia is defined as the phobia relating to the fear of hospitals. This often goes together with another type of anxiety, Tomophobia, the fear of surgery or surgical operations.
To an extent, no one likes going to the hospital, because we associate it with pain, illness, blood, and sometimes death. Visiting the hospital means that we have to deal with things that we rather avoid.
However, we are usually able to find a way of dealing with hospital visits and the anxiety that comes with it. We comfort ourselves by repeating that “it is just a medical necessity” we have to accept because it will make us feel better in the end. In cases of Nosocomephobia though, someone refuses to go to the hospital and have any kind of treatment done which could have serious consequences.
Children can’t always understand the importance of going to the hospital which makes it difficult to explain that it’s only for the better. They are focused on the hospital experience that they are probably not going to like and this in combination with a traumatic hospital experience in the past can lead to developing Nosocomephobia.
The causes
A traumatic experience like a painful treatment, the diagnosis of an illness, or the death of a loved one. The brain then conditions the same response over and over each time of having to deal with a hospital visit. This is the most likely reason behind it.
Another cause could be the fear of germs or acquiring a contagious disease.
It could also be caused by the fact that intense emotions are connected to visiting the hospital, e.g. loss, pain, despair, frustration, and disappointment. These are for some people too confronting and very hard to deal with.
Especially in children the fear of hospitals could be intensified by the hospital environment itself; there is a particular antiseptic smell, unfamiliar medical instruments, sick roommates and often the child is not in control of the situation.
The symptoms
There are a few symptoms often seen in children with Nosocomephobia that parents can use to recognize this type of anxiety; a panic attack which could include running away, shaking or crying, feeling nauseated, experiencing elevated heart rate and shallow and rapid breathing, excessive sweating and avoidance behaviour or refusing to go.
This is often very difficult for parents to deal with. It is usually extremely emotional and stressful to get the anxious child to see a doctor for a necessary treatment or checkup. Sometimes parents even have to hold the child down for the doctor to be able to perform the procedure, which is traumatic for both the child and the parents.
Treatment
This is why it’s so important to know how to help children with Nosocomephobia.
Talk therapy and play therapy are often used to treat many types of anxiety. Other treatments to overcome Nosocomephobia include Neuro-linguistic reprogramming, the study of the structure of subjective experience and what can be calculated from that and is predicated upon the belief that all behaviour has structure.
I have seen the positive effects of another type of treatment I have used myself many times, systematic desensitisation, the graduated exposure therapy. This has worked well for many of the children I have worked with, especially in combination with relaxation techniques. These types of treatment will reduce the anxiety significantly and will make a hospital visit a lot less unpleasant.
Elisabeth Peters is a Psychologist with her own company providing psychological services for children, families and schools. She has been working in a wide range of settings and has experience in dealing with numerous mental health issues. Recently, she has developed age-specific programs for overcoming (exam) stress.
She is a Psychologist, a Member of the British Psychological Society, with a Masters in Child, Adolescent and Family Mental Health and thorough training in play therapy and mindfulness.
Elisabeth Peters lives in London, United Kingdom.