orders (APA, 2000). The category of anxiety disorders covers all disorders in which the distinguishing feature is a sense of anxiety (Colman, 2004). This category includes panic attacks, agoraphobia, panic disorder without agoraphobia, agoraphobia without history of panic disorder, specific phobia, social phobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, acute stress disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, anxiety disorder due to a general medical condition, substance-induced anxiety disorder, and anxiety disorder not otherwise specified (APA, 2000). Thus, the category contains a wide breadth of mental disorders, all of which share the common element of anxiety, which can be defined as a "state of uneasiness, accompanied by dysphoria and somatic signs and symptoms of tension, focused on apprehension of possible failure, misfortune or danger" (Colman, 2004, 46). For the purposes of this paper, only specific phobias will be examined, however, they should first be differentiated from the disorders of agoraphobia and social phobia. Agoraphobia is an intense fear of places in which escape may be difficult, embarrassing or impossible, and is commonly understood as a fear of large crowds. Agoraphobia is a specific phobia in the sense that it is specific to the anxiety over being unable to escape, but it is closely related to panic disorder and has many distinguishable features that warrant it being mentioned in the DSM-IV as a separate and specific disorder (APA, 2000). Social phobia is also referred to as social anxiety disorder, and it is identified by a "marked and persistent fear of social or performance situations in which embarrassment may occur" (APA, 2000, 450), thus making the element of potential embarrassment in public the key element. Specific phobias differ from agoraphobia and social phobia in that they do not necessarily include the same elements, other than the strong sense of anxiety in...