Flooding

• One strength of flooding is it provides a cost-effective treatment for phobias.
• Ougrin (2011) suggested that flooding is comparable to other treatments, including systematic desensitisation and cognitive therapies.
• In flooding patients are treated quicker, so it is more cost effective for health service providers.
• Flooding is less ethical than other treatments, as they is a greater risk of psychological harm.
• Flooding can be highly traumatic for some patients, causing high levels of anxiety.
• Athough patients provide informed consent, many do not complete their treatment because the experience is too stressful.
• Flooding is highly effective for simple (specific) phobias.
• Flooding is less effective for other types of phobia, including social phobia and agoraphobia.
• Other treatments like cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) are more effective.
• Fooding can work in as little as one session.
• Schumacher et al (2015) found that patients and therapists rated flooding as significantly more stressful than SD.
• Participant attrition (drop-out) is higher for flooding.
• Persons (1986) suggest that behavioural therapies only mask the symptoms, they do not treat the underlying issues.
• Individual differences play a role in the effectiveness of flooding.
• Strength:

  Cost effective:

  Flooding is as effective as other treatments for phobias, and works very quickly.

  Good for patients as it is less expensive, requires less time.

  This suggests that more patients can be treated compared to using Systematic Desensitisation.
• Weakness:

  Less effective for some types of phobias:

  Flooding works well for specific phobias e.g. snakes, feet, spiders etc

  It works well for social phobias. This is because social phobias have a less behavioural response, and more of a cognitive response, e.g. traumatic thoughts about social situations.

  Suggests that these types of phobias may benefit more from cognitive therapies, rather than behavioural ones.
• Weakness:

  Highly traumatic for patients:

  Although patients give their informed consent(which means it IS ethical), patients often don't follow through with it until extinction of the phobia.

  Problem because participants may experience psychological harm, if trauma is caused participants drop out and then the phobia has not be treated.