IMAGINE riding on the MTR and being suddenly overcome by a fear so intense that your heart begins racing and your lungs gasp frantically for air. Or being so obsessed with hygiene that you spend hours in the shower, painfully scrubbing your arms and legs until they are raw. Or being convinced you have contracted AIDS, and worrying so much about it that you appear to develop symptoms of the disease.
'I would start shaking when I drew the shower curtain because I feared the lack of fresh air,' explained Janet, a 40-year-old office worker. 'I would imagine myself dying of suffocation. Travelling through a tunnel, or walking in a crowded street could trigger the same fear. I feared other people were going to consume my oxygen.' Janet is one of thousands of sufferers of panic attacks in the territory who find that certain situations scare them rigid.
One day, on the MTR, her heart began racing. She began sweating, felt dizzy and gasped for air. Fearing a heart attack, she started trembling.
'I covered my heart. I was so frightened I thought I was going to die,' she said.
Janet has a healthy heart. Her problem is panic attacks, one of the most frightening forms of anxiety disorder. Such attacks occur without warning, and reach an intense and terrifying crescendo within minutes. It is estimated that 90,000 to 210,000 Hong Kong people suffer from the psychiatric condition.
Psychologists at Queen Mary Hospital believe the numbers could be higher because many sufferers believe the problem is in their body, rather than their mind. Janet, for example, sought treatment from a cardiologist instead of a psychologist - until two years ago when she responded to an appeal for research subjects by the University of Hong Kong.
The study, jointly carried out with psychologists from Oxford University, aims to provide effective treatment to patients suffering from panic attacks, a condition which is often associated with phobias.