Hemophobia is the fear of blood, which can be accompanied by a fear of needles and passing out. Treatment options include psychological therapies, anti-anxiety medication, and accommodations from medical providers. It’s important to discuss the fear with healthcare providers and avoid teasing, which can worsen the phobia.
Hemophobia is the fear of blood. People with hemophobia usually fear their own blood as well as the blood of others, and may experience phobic reactions when exposed to things like photographs, films, and descriptions of blood. There are a number of treatment options for people with this type of phobia that can be explored with a mental health professional or doctor.
Sometimes hemophobia is rooted in a real-life experience and can be accompanied by things like a fear of injections and a fear of passing out. In this case, a traumatic experience resulted in excessive sensitivity to blood. Trauma can include secondary sources of exposure, such as hearing a traumatic story from someone, watching a film with scary content, or seeing gory images. In other cases, there may be no source of trauma, but the patient still reacts violently when exposed to blood.
The symptoms of hemophobia vary. Some patients experience an increase in blood pressure and heart rate. Others may have the opposite response, even fainting when they see blood. Other symptoms may include shaking, sweating, confusion, nausea, dizziness, and weakness. The patient may develop a fear of knives, needles, and other sharp objects because they are associated with bleeding, and sometimes patients also experience a fear of fainting caused by fainting experienced during bouts of hemophobia.
The fear of blood can be very real to the person experiencing it, and it’s important to talk about it with health care providers. People like phlebotomists appreciate being told when a patient has a fear of blood, as they can adjust their routine to accommodate the patient or provide the patient with suggestions that can lessen the severity of the phobic response. Patients should never be embarrassed to discuss their fear of blood before a procedure begins and ask for it to be noted in their medical records.
Treatments for hemophobia can include a variety of psychological therapies that usually revolve around gradually desensitizing the patient. It is important to have desensitization under supervision, as attempts at home can actually further traumatize the patient instead of helping. Other treatments may include prescriptions for anti-anxiety medications that can be taken before procedures that may involve blood, breathing exercises, and guided imagery to be used when a phobia appears to be manifesting itself, and accommodations requests from medical providers designed to minimize the blood exposure.
While the fear of blood may seem ridiculous to a patient’s friends or family, it’s important to be aware that teasing and teasing can make a phobia worse by eliciting even more anxiety and stress. Friends and family who want to be supportive of someone working with hemophobia should ask the patient what they can do.
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