Mark Sykes and his colleagues note how people with emetophobia are often misdiagnosed because the behaviors associated with their phobia mimic the symptoms of obsessive compsulsive disorder, panic disorder, panic disorder with agoraphobia, generalised anxiety disorder and other conditions.

Veale adds: "Sometimes if a patient is very very underweight and avoiding food as to not wanting to vomit, the phobia presents itself as anorexia."