Treatment - behav approach

    Cards (10)

    • How does systematic desensitisation work?
      • Works through reciprocal inhibition (can't feel fear and relaxation simultaneously).
      • Uses classical conditioning to replace irrational fears with relaxation.
      • Client learns relaxation techniques.
      • Gradual exposure to the phobic stimulus in stages of increasing intensity.
      • Anxiety is replaced by calmness over time.
    • What are the 3 stages of SD?
      1 - anxiety hierarchy
      2- relaxation
      3 - exposure
    • Explain anxiety hierarchy
      • Both patient and therapist constructs a AH
      • List of situation that causes fear and anxiety
      • Ordered from least fear inducing and most fear inducing
    • Explain Relaxation
      • The client is taught relaxation techniques - to teach them how to relax deeply
      • Breathing and mental imagery
    • Explain exposure
      • The patient is exposed to each stage of the hierarchy one by one
      • Starts with least fear inducing
      • Until they are fully relaxed - move to the next stage
      • repeats until fully relaxed with highest stage
    • How does flooding work?
      • Prevents avoidance behavior
      • Direct and immediate exposure
      • Can be 2-3 hours
      • Stay in the presence of phobic stimulus until fear has receded or phobia behavior is exhausted
    • How does flooding work?
      • Patient is unable to avoid the phobic stimulus so learns that it is harmless
      • known as extinction - Classical conditioning
      • When the CS is present without the UNS
      • So the CS no longer presents the CR
    • One strength - research on the effectiveness of SD
      • Gilroy et al - tested 42 patients treated for spider phobias in 3 45 minutes SD sessions.
      • A control group was treated by relaxation without exposure
      • At 3 months and 33 months after, the SD group was significantly less fearful than the control group
      This shows - SD is an effective treatment and the impacts are long lasting - thus usefull for phobias - increases validity
    • One limitation - fails to address the real cause of the phobia
      • Criticized by psychodynamic model - claims the therapies only focus on the symptoms - ignores the cause of phobia.
      • Psychoanalyst - symptoms are merely the tip of the iceberg.
      • The real cause may be traumatic childhood experiences that are suppressed into the unconscious mind.
      • Believes that the therapy's only alleviate the anxiety caused by it.
      WB - long term phobia will resurface in a different form ( symptom substitution)
      Thus using behav therapy to treat phobias is not effective
    • One limitation - flooding treatment is traumatic
      • patient to give up their right to withdraw -> to the patient experiencing extreme emotion and even symptoms such as fainting.
      • This a problem as the stressful nature of flooding may put people off from trying it.
      • Furthermore, flooding may need to stop due to needed medical attention for sudden physiological problems triggered by stress
      • If treatment is stopped it may make the phobia even worse
      Thus SD is more effective and ethical treatment as it gives the patient full control and allows them to withdraw at any time thus reducing credibility
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