Filenews 18 June 2021
In times of intense anxiety, the feeling of fainting often manifests itself. But it is a hallucination, as fainting occurs after a large decrease in blood pressure, a condition that is diametrically opposed to intense anxiety, where blood pressure increases.
The exception to this rule is the case of needle phobia. A unique phenomenon in anxiety disorders, people with this phobia who see a subcutaneous injection first experience an increase in their heart rate and blood pressure, followed by a sharp drop in both, resulting in some actually fainting.
If you experience this, it is perfectly understandable to want to avoid any injection. The need for vaccination for COVID-19, however, means that at some point we will all be called to confront the needle. So could this phobia explain why some people refuse to be vaccinated?
Identifying fears
To find out what role stress plays in the hesitation towards vaccination for COVID-19, Daniel Freeman, professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Oxford, turned to 15,014 participants in the OCEANS-III survey, a project designed to provide scientific answers on how best to present vaccination information to the public in order to combat excessive mistrust.
"We invited participants to rate their feelings about injections, blood donation or even watching a surgery on TV. We also asked them about their willingness to be vaccinated for COVID-19," says Dr. Saunders. Freeman on the study published in Psychological Medicine.
As reported in a related publication in The Conversation, a quarter of participants tested positive for possible needle fear, which shows how common this condition is. The interesting thing, however, is that these individuals were twice as likely to report being reluctant to be vaccinated for the coronavirus - either by postponing it or avoiding it altogether.
"We have certainly found a correlation, but causality has not yet been established. But because fear of the needle is a particularly likely cause of such cases of hesitation, it is indicated that if we could somehow magically remove the stress of injection from humans, about 10% of the cases would disappear at the same time," points out an expert.
Hesitation about vaccination tends to be a little higher among younger people and some ethnic minorities. But in these population groups it is not only the scepticism towards the vaccine that is more common, but also the fear of injection, which shows that this is not a coincidence. "While it certainly does not appear to be the key factor, the OCEANS-III work suggests that fear of injection is responsible for the higher rates of hesitation for vaccination in these population groups," comments Dr . Freeman.
How to fight phobias
In trying to control the pandemic, every vaccination counts. So what can we do to deal with the fear of injection? The expert stresses that rapid and effective cognitive-behavioural therapies have been developed, which work gradually, exposing the patient to injection-related stimulants until the phobias subside.
For example, the treatment of a session developed by Lars‐Göran Öst involves the gradual progression from repeated finger piercing with a small scalpel to insertion of a needle without injection and then to actual injections with saline solution. It lasts three hours and produces results that last for 80% of people.
Fainting tendencies can also be treated. Patients first learn to recognize the early signs of a drop in their blood pressure and then treat it by applying tension to the muscles: five cycles of pressure on the muscles of the hand, chest and legs for 20 seconds and then 20-30 seconds more with pressure at normal levels.
In conclusion, the OCEANS-III work suggests that increased access to such treatments of needle phobia is likely to reduce hesitation towards vaccination.
