Treating phobias

• The behavioural therapies to treat phobias are?

  Systemic desensitisation and flooding
• SD: a form of behavioural therapy to treat phobias and anxiety disorders, where a client is gradually exposed to a phobic stimulus under relaxed conditioned until the conditioned response of fear is eliminated. This can take a few sessions.
• Flooding: a form of behavioural therapy to treat phobias and anxiety disorders, where the client is immediately exposed to an extreme form of the phobic stimulus under relaxed conditions to eliminate the fear response. These sessions are typically much shorter than SD.
• relaxation techniques are taught to the patient before exposing them to the phobic stimulus. They are taught to reduce anxiety by focusing on breathing slowly and deeply, as well as imagining a peaceful scene.
• desensitisation hierarchy: a gradual progression of exposing a phobic stimulus to a patient in increasing intensity, eg a picture of a spider, seeing a spider, touching a spider, until their anxiety diminishes and thesituation becomes less overwhelming.
• counterconditioning: the patient is taught a new association to replace the original one, such as relaxation to replace fear. This is done through classical conditioning and they become desensitised to the phobic stimulus.
• strength of SD

  -an effective cure for a range of phobias

  -McGrath + Choy: 75% of patients responded well to SD, in vivo techniques are more successful forms of exposure.

  -Comer, different technique used in modelling, patient views someone who is coping well with the feared stimulus.

  -demonstrates its effectiveness
• limitation of SD

  -may not be effective for every phobia

  -Ohman, SD may not work for phobias with evolutionary survival components.

  -such as fear of the dark, heights or snakles

  -SD is only effective for some phobias
• strength of flooding


  -effective and quick to cure.

  -Choy said both SD and flooding were effective but flooding was better.

  -Craske concluded both were equally effective.

  -thus flooding is an effective option.
• Limitation of flooding


  -individual differences unaccounted for

  -flooding can be highly traumatic for some patients especially children who are more vulnerable.

  -patients may quit during the treatment, reversing all impact and effectiveness of the therapy.

  -thus individual responses to flooding differ and limit its effectiveness.