IS pregnant but suffers from a strong form of agorafobia (fear of open spaces) that for four years has forced her to stay indoors: the court obliges her to give birth in the hospital, against his will.
The young woman in childbirth, alone 21 years, he handled the whole pregnancy at home, due to his disabling pathology. Having carried out all the necessary examinations at his home, he would have liked to have the birth at home, despite the contrary opinion of both his partner and his mother.
The decision was therefore taken by the London court, which authorized the hospital to use force to proceed with the hospitalization of the pregnant woman. “I appreciate that for her it will be an ordeal”, The judge told the expectant mother, who followed the hearing in streaming, obviously from home. However, the court remained steadfast in establishing the need for a I give birth in the clinic, “To prevent any problems and possible dramatic consequences”.
The hospital’s lawyers had requested judicial intervention, in order to obtain explicit authorization from theuse of force. The judge satisfied them, defining in detail which methods can be used for this purpose: for example, it will not be allowed to put the woman in the prone position or block her with mechanical tools. Recognizing a limited ability to decide on the part of the parturient, precisely because of her phobia, the judge had to weigh both possibilities, given that some specialists explained that a woman could suffer psychiatric damage, in case of forced hospitalization. However, the court ruled that doing so was “in the best interest of the woman”, who also lives in an awkward position outside London. “It is better this way, instead of risking having to rush to the hospital with a tremendous rush in the night, ”concluded the judge.
A decidedly curious case, even on an ethical level, but not rare. Just think that – only in Italy – the people who suffer from phobia are between 750,000 and two and a half million. A more precise quantification is not easy, as many do not declare their ailments and in any case suffer from them to a very variable and subjective extent, certainly not all at the level of the 21-year-old Englishman.
What are phobias?
Phobias can be of various types, but the most common ones are agoraphobia and its mirror opposite: claustrophobia, or the fear of enclosed spaces.
In all these cases, a further problem is thereanticipatory anxiety, that is a real panic crisis that arises before the real phobia, for the “only” anguish of going towards a situation of fear. A theme that, for example, is well known to the numerous people who suffer from aviophobia (fear of flying): very often, the heaviest symptoms are recorded the day before taking the plane or even entering the airport, while the flight can also go quite well.
How to help those suffering from these phobias?
First of all, it is necessary to understand well what it is and to distinguish them from fear in the strict sense, which is instead a useful tool to avoid putting oneself in danger. Phobia is a distressing fear, but unmotivated and precisely for this reason of a pathological nature. It is perfectly useless to stress the absence of a real danger, because this it does not help those who are ill and, indeed, it can worsen the solution, making him feel socially inadequate. The most effective solution is the psychotherapy, which helps the subject to break the link between an anxiety that is actually elsewhere and an external factor to which it is arbitrarily linked. Let the external object be a spider or a horse (two other very common phobias) basically matters little. Equally valuable, especially during the psychological journey, is the support of psychotropic drugs, which by lowering the symptoms help the person to find their way. Sometimes even in the literal sense.