Phobias: Behavioral Explanation

• Phobias are one of the most interesting mental health conditions to discuss due to the wide range of objects people can photograph.
• Behaviorist approach explains and treats phobias through classical and operant conditioning.
• Phobias can be acquired through classical conditioning learning by association, where a phobic object like a B starts as a neutral stimulus and causes a neutral response.
• An unconditioned stimulus like the pain of being stung will produce an unconditioned fear response.
• Unconditioned stimulus response links are automatic and don't need to be learned.
• When the neutral stimulus in this case the B is paired with the unconditioned stimulus of being stung, an association is formed and the B becomes a conditioned stimulus, producing the condition response of fear on its own.
• Phobias can be generalized, so a conditioned fear response is also experienced in the presence of stimuli that are similar to the conditioned stimulus.
• The second part of the two process model suggests that phobias are maintained through operant conditioning, which is a form of learning that occurs through learning the consequences of our actions.
• A person with a phobia is aware of their phobia and may try to avoid the phobic object and the situations that put them in contact with it.
• This avoidance leads to reduction in anxiety which is a pleasant sensation, acting as a reinforcement and strengthening the phobia.
• Flooding is likely to be a quicker process than systematic desensitization, potentially taking fewer sessions to achieve the same result.
• Flooding is not appropriate for older people, people who have heart conditions, or children.
• Drugs are an alternative treatment for phobias as they are an anxiety disorder, with tranquilizers like benzodiazepines and antidepressants used to lower anxiety and reduce the phobic response.
• If flooding fails and the client is released before the anxiety is subsided, the phobia will be reinforced.
• Flooding is not appropriate for treating social phobias as it's easier to build and slowly progress through an anxiety hierarchy about being exposed to buttons or have a full and traumatic experience to snakes in a controlled environment than replicate a party and interactions with strangers in the therapist office.
• Flooding attempts to counter condition a phobia by immediate and full exposure to the maximum level of a phobic stimulus, which is the top level of the previous anxiety hierarchy.
• Immediate exposure in flooding is expected to cause an extreme panic response in the client, and the therapist's job is to stop the client from escaping the situation.
• Virtual reality exposure therapy is an adaptation of systematic desensitization principles, with Garcia palacitos finding 83 percent of participants showed clinically significant improvement after VR exposure to spiders compared to zero percent in the control group.
• Systematic desensitization is often the client's preferred treatment as they are in control of their progress and can stop themselves from moving to the next level if they're not fully relaxed.
• A problem with both systematic desensitization and flooding is that they may seem to be effective in the controlled environment of the clinician's room, but when the phobia is being treated it could be that this effect isn't generalized to experiences in the real world.
• Lil Albert developed a fear response to other similar objects such as small dogs and furry blankets, demonstrating generalization.
• Watson's research in 1920 demonstrated that phobias can be acquired through Association.
• The two process model explains phobias as learned associations.
• Mendes and Clark's research on children of a phobia of water found that only two percent could recall a negative experience of water and 56 of parents told researchers the phobia had been present from the child's first encounter with water.
• The therapy only continues when the client is fully relaxed.
• Humans don't commonly display phobic responses to objects that cause the most pain in day-to-day life.
• Dinardo's research showed that while conditioning events like dog bites were common in participants with dog phobias, they were at least as common in participants with no dog phobia.
• Laura's phobia is impacting her ability to engage with her social life and is affecting her day-to-day life.
• Flooding and systematic desensitization are based on the behaviorist principle that phobias are learned associations and both of the therapies attempt to replace the fear association with the phobic object with one of relaxation or calmness.
• The client is then exposed to each different level of the anxiety hierarchy starting with the least anxiety-reducing level, perhaps seeing a photograph of the phobic object, to the highest, holding the phobic object.
• When the therapist moves to the next stage, the final stage will likely be holding the phobic object and when this can be done without fear and with relaxation, the association is extinct and a new association has been formed.
• In systematic desensitization, the therapist begins by teaching the client relaxation techniques like breathing exercises, then creates an anxiety hierarchy, a list of feared situations with the phobic object starting with those at the least feared to the most feared.
• The behaviorist approach is not a full explanation for all phobias.
• The behaviorist theories of phobias have been used to develop effective counter conditioning therapies such as flooding and systematic desensitization.
• Each stage of the therapy is designed to help the client relax using relaxation techniques.