behavioural approach to treating phobias

• systematic desensitisation

  • this treatment follows the belief that fear can be eliminated by associating the feared stimulus with a positive stimulus
  • this is difficult at first as anxiety is incompatible with positive moods
  • joseph wolpe developed a technique to overcome this by introducing the phobic to their feared situation gradually
• counter-conditioning

  • phobias are often the result of a negative association or experience
  • the aim of systematic desensitisation is to get the patient to lose to learned association
  • may try to re-associate the fear with a positive experience (counter-conditioning)
  • patients are taught to use relaxation techniques when they experience fear, eg, breathing techniques
• desensitisation hierarchy

  • patient and therapist construct a series of imagined scenarios involving the fear object - each one causing more anxiety than the previous one
  • patient then imagines each of the scenarios, while practicing the relaxation techniques
  • once relaxed imagining one scenario they move onto the next, until have total mastery over their fear.
• flooding

  • one alternative to gradual exposure is flooding
  • still involves relaxation techniques beforehand, but involves one continued exposure to the feared stimuli - either in vivo or via virtual reality
  • as the adrenal response has a time limit, the ideas is that a new stimulus-response link can be learned when adrenaline levels decrease