Flooding

• What is flooding?

  > Exposing patient directly to worst fears for an extended period of time in a safe and controlled enviornment

  > Based on classical conditioning
• What is the process of flooding?

  > State of extreme anxiety

  > Alarm stage: create a stress response (fight or flight) kicks in.

  • heart beats faster, higher blood pressure, perspiration begins
  • short amount of time

  > Exhaustion sets in, anxiety levels drop

  > Anxiety subsides and person finds they have come to not harm, fear is extinguished
• How does flooding work?

  > Through classical conditioning

  > Links to extinction

  > Breaks association between conditioned stimulus and conditioned response, goes back to being a neutral stimulus
• How can it create a positive association?

  Prolonged intense exposure creates a new association which can be positive
• What is supportive evidence of flooding?

  > Joseph Wolpe

  > drove a girl who had a fear of driving around for 4 hours, after being in a state of hysterics she calmed down and learned to enjoy car rides
• What is refuting evidence of flooding?

  > Some people may not be able to tolerate the high levels of anxiety induced by therapy so they are at risk of exiting the therapy before they are calm

  > Strengthens rather than weakens phobia
• What is supporting evidence of flooding and proof of it being time-efficient?

  > Prof. Lars-Goran Ost

  > 90% of patients vastly improved or recovered after just 2 hours of therapy

  > Low attrition rate
• How is flooding palliative?

  > Do not tackle the possible underlying problem behind the phobia

  > Behavioural therapies that only deal with the symptoms

  > An underlying cause like trauma might mean that the therapy won't work
• How is flooding curative?

  >Present the sufferer with unavoidable exposure which is true to real life

  > Prepares sufferers for occasions when they may be confronted unexpectedly with the object they fear with no escape
• How is flooding unethical and use social control?

  > Exposing people to high levels of anxiety is less ethical than SD

  > Patient is not in control of the situation