One in ten of us will be affected by claustrophobia in our lifetime, and it’s more common among women.
The charity Anxiety UK says: ‘For people suffering from claustrophobia who have developed a pattern of avoidance, their behaviour may have become so entrenched that they hardly notice the lengths that they go to in order to avoid being “trapped”.’.
One study of mice by German scientists suggested that claustrophobia could be the result of a gene mutation, while Japanese academics found it may be down to having a smaller amygdala, the part of the brain that controls anxiety.
Some people are crippled just by thinking about these types of enclosed spaces, so will go to extreme lengths to avoid them in real life - which can have a devastating effect on their quality of life.
Peter Kinderman, a professor of clinical psychology, says: ‘I can think of 1,000 ways in which somebody’s attention would be drawn to the dangers of being trapped without them ever experiencing it.
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