Agoraphobia and the Internet

Many people in the world have a disorder known as agoraphobia. This disorder brings on extremely strong panic attacks when in crowded places.

The definition for agoraphobia is an anxiety disorder. The main manifestation of the disorder is a fear of having an embarrassing situation that the person cannot escape from

Someone with Agoraphobia will sometimes have panic attacks when they are in a situation where they feel trapped, uncomfortable or when they are not in control or are too far away from their comfort zone, which are usually their homes. In extreme cases an agoraphobic may only be able to exist in only a room or two of their own home and may even become unable to get out of bed.

Sufferers of Agoraphobia are often overly sensitive to bodily sensations and over react to everyday occurrences, like climbing a flight of stairs. The effort it takes to climb stairs can cause a full blown panic attack, because their heart rate rises as does their breathing. The sufferer may see this is the onset of an attack and actually causes the attack to start, instead of seeing it as a natural reaction to climbing stairs.

With the invention of the internet many agoraphobics have found they are able to have contact with the world while still at home in their “safe place” and one thing that many agoraphobics have in common is that many of them enjoyed being able to gamble with other people in online casinos.

Many doctors feel that online casinos is a great form of therapy for people suffering from agoraphobia because they can interacts with several people at the same time, and it gives them the ability to interact and be relaxed at the same time and in many cases the agoraphobic has been able to lessen their fears and eventually leave their home with the goal of eventually getting to a real casino with other people.

Doctors found that in games like poker and blackjack where the player’s game depends on the moves of the other players; have a tendency to be better for patients then on online roulette or craps game, where you can easily have no interaction with other players.

The interaction is healthy because the agoraphobic is not concentration on themselves they are actually concentration on the game and the other players moves. For a sufferer of this disorder this is a huge step in being able to re-enter society, recently online casinos have been banned.   But it is possible that other internet social networking or multi-player role playing games could be beneficial for agoraphobia sufferers.

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HealthStatus has been operating since 1998 providing the best interactive health tools on the Internet, millions of visitors have used our blood alcohol, body fat and calories burned calculators. The HealthStatus editorial team has continued that commitment to excellence by providing our visitors with easy to understand high quality health content for many years. Our team of health professionals, and researchers use peer reviewed studies as source elements in our articles. Our high quality content has been featured in a number of leading websites, USA Today, the Chicago Tribune, Live Strong, GQ, and many more.

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Written by HealthStatus Team
Medical Writer & Editor

HealthStatus has been operating since 1998 providing the best interactive health tools on the Internet, millions of visitors have used our blood alcohol, body fat and calories burned calculators. The HealthStatus editorial team has continued that commitment to excellence by providing our visitors with easy to understand high quality health content for many years. Our team of health professionals, and researchers use peer reviewed studies as source elements in our articles. Our high quality content has been featured in a number of leading websites, USA Today, the Chicago Tribune, Live Strong, GQ, and many more.

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