behavioural therapies

• Systematic desentetisation

  principles of classical conditioning

  • uses countrerconditioning to get the patient to learn a new response of relaxation instead of fear in the presence of their feared stimulus 
• Three processes

  1. desensetistion hierarchy- put together by the patient and therapist arranging stiumuli from low to high anxiety

  2. The second is relaxation- teaching relaxation techniques such as deep breathing exercises and muscle relaxation to get them to relax as deeply as possible.

  3. Then they expose the patient to the feared stimulus, working through the hierarchy low-high one step at a time so it is not overwhelming at each step practicing relaxation techniques until they are calm in the presence of their phobic stimulus.
• flooding-

  one long session where the patient is immersed with their phobia at its worst

  • For example a person who is afraid of clowns is placed in a room full of clowns
  • The first step is patient is taught how to relax
  • Then these techniques are applied in a feared situation until they master it 
  • as there is only so much time SNS will be at optimum ,Adrenaline (which is released in response to the threat )eventually subsides -learning a new association
• One strength is there is research to support its effectiveness. For example mgrath found that systematic desitisation had a 75% success rate for patients suffering with phobias. Furthermore Gilroy found that SD patients (spider phobia) had a significant reduction in symptoms compared with a control group. This shows it is a well-supported behavioural therapy for reducing anxiety symptoms and is effective in helping the majority of patients confront their fears, therefore can signfificantly improve their quality of life.

  
  

  counter+ it doesn't work for 25% of people . One example is Patients with phobias which have not developed through a personal experience (classical conditioning) for example, a fear of heights, are not effectively treated using systematic desensitisation.

  wolitzky-taylor
• Although flooding is a very effective way of treating phobias, it is not always the best way of treating them. This is because exposing the client to something they find distressing can be highly traumatic for the client. The client is made aware of this before the therapy begins. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the client will be able to cope. furthermore it could backfire and make the patient even more frightened of that thing.Therefore, for at least some people, other therapies may be a better way to treat their phobias. For those patients who do choose and stick w flooding it appears to be an effective, and relatively quick, treatment. Choy et al. (2007) reported that both effective but flooding was the more effective of the two at treating phobias.

  + review (Craske et al., 2008) concluded that SD and flooding were equally effective in the treatment of phobias. 
• A criticism is it may not always be possible for t's effectiveness may not generalsie to real life .Some phobias may be hard to re-create these things in the therapy session and hard to manipulate these things into a stimulus hierarchy. eg. With a fear of flying (aerophobia), you're either flying or you're not. The sufferer isn't frightened of aeroplanes or films set on aeroplanes; it's actually being up in the air themselves that they find frightening. Therefore as it doesn't reflect real life it may not change the fear response when they encounter the actual scenario.

  Furthermore It might be that, in real life, sufferers do not get to choose when and how they encounter the object of their fear (a spider might drop on you unexpectedly!) and they might have no control over a real life situation. This means that the benefits of the therapy might not generalise to real life situations.
• • CBT helps individuals identify and change negative thought patterns and behaviors associated with their phobias.

  It involves understanding the root causes of the phobia,l, and developing coping mechanisms to manage the fear and anxiety.