Click on the following links. Please note these will open in a new window.

(Anxiety UK is a UK-based charity for sufferers of all kinds of anxiety disorder. This great, reliable website is written largely by sufferers of anxiety dis­orders, and is checked by leading psychologists. It contains lots of information on what it is like to have an anxiety disorder, and about treatment.)

(This website is produced by a non-psychologist who has a strong interest in phobias, and focuses more on theories about phobias than on treatment.)

Bennett-Levy, J., Richards, D., Farrand, P., Christensen, H., Griffiths, K., Kavanagh, D., et al. (2010). Oxford Guide to Low Intensity CBT Interventions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (If you want to know more about cognitive-behavioural treatments for phobias, there are lots of ‘introduction to CBT’-type books around, and most will have a chapter on phobias. This good, modern one also gives you a feel for the realities of delivering psychological interventions in a hard-pressed public health service.)

Butler, G. (1989). Phobic disorders. In K. Hawton, P.M. Salkovskis, J. Kirk and D.M. Clark (eds), Cognitive Behaviour Therapy for Psychiatric Problems: A Practical Guide. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (This is a good, clear account of how therapy for specific phobias is put in place: it may look like quite an old reference, but things really haven’t changed that much!)

Fisak, B., & Grills-Taquechel, A. E. (2007). Parental modeling, reinforcement, and information transfer: Risk factors in the development of child anxiety? Clinical Child and Family Psychol­ogy Review, 10(3): 213–231. (This paper nicely reviews the literature on the vicarious learning and negative information pathways to fear acquisition, with a particular focus on how parents might transmit fears to their children in this way.)

Wermter, A.-K., Laucht, M., Schimmelmann, B., Banaschweski, T., Sonuga-Barke, E., Rietschel, M., & Becker, K. (2010). From nature versus nurture, via nature and nurture, to gene × environment interaction in mental disorders. European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 19(3): 199–210. (An accessible overview of the gene–environment story.)