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psychopathology
phobia
behavioural approach to treating phobias
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Created by
Nicole Skrzynecka
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Cards (4)
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