Case Report A Curious Case of Flower Phobia: Anthophobia Desiree Saimbi, Shabdita R. Sarmah, Atmesh Kumar, Rupali P. Shivalkar, Sanjeeta Prasad Department of Psychiatry, St. Stephens Hospital, New Delhi. Ann Natl Acad Med Sci (India), 53(3): 175-178, 2017 Correspondence : Dr. Desiree Saimbi, Department of Psychiatry, St. Stephens Hospital, New Delhi. Mob : 7354547713. Email: dsaimbi@gmail.com. Fears, anxieties and specific phobias are classified as internalizing behavior problems. The development of specific phobias may result from the pairing of a specific object or situation with the emotion of fear. Flowers are usually perceived as pleasant stimulus, producing a relaxing effect on our mind and body, but here we present a rare case, wherein flowers are perceived as a malevolent stimulus and producing phobic anxiety in an eleven-year old boy, leading to avoidance behaviors and much interference in normal functioning. He was diagnosed to have Specific Phobia of natural environment type with Somnambulism and treated with SSRI (escitalopram) and Behavior Therapy (systematic desensitization). Over a period of eight months his symptoms remitted completely and he maintained the remission for now one year with no further intervention. Keywords: Childhood fear, phobias, anxiety, behavior therapy, flowers fear. ABSTRACT Introduction Experiencing fear and anxiety is normal and healthy in the course of child development and emotional growth. These emotions can even be looked upon as adaptive and as impressive markers of increasingly complex cognition and abstract thought processes (1, 2). However, when these fears linger and become more intense, a different type of developmental event may be signaled - the development of a specific phobia. A specific phobia diagnosis as per International Classification of Diseases, 10th Edition (ICD-10) should be considered when there is marked fear of a specific object or situation not included in agoraphobia or social phobia or shows marked avoidance of such objects or situations. Experiences symptoms of anxiety in the feared situation at some time since the onset of the disorder with significant emotional distress due to the symptoms or the avoidance, and recognizing these as excessive or unreasonable. The symptoms are restricted to the feared situation or when thinking about it (3). Further childhood phobias may result from terrifying or frightening experiences; they may also be due to observing or through reading about it or hearing about fears and phobias in others. Some childhood phobias apparently have no obvious environmental cause, direct or indirect, and reportedly 'have always been present' in the child. In general, when a specific event is paired with an emotional experience the person is susceptible to a permanent emotional association between feared object and fear or anxiety. Avoidance behaviors in children often take the form of tantrums, crying, and shying away. Often the child is brought in for treatment not because of the fear itself but due to severity