Behaviourist treatment

• behaviours treatment

  Systematic desensitisation

  Based on the idea that to competing emotions can’t carry the same time

  Patient is trained in relaxation techniques, and construct, anxiety hierarchy

  Patient experiences every situation from lowest anxiety to highest anxiety, and they must be completely relaxed with the situation before moving on to next

  The patient unlearns the associations they previously made
• behaviours treatment

  Flooding

  Based on the idea we can’t maintain the fear response, fight or flight

  Patient is placed in the highest anxiety situation straight away

  At the start they experience fear, but this is replaced by calm

  Patient, no associate stimuli with calm
• A strength of systematic desensitisation is the evidence base for its effectiveness

  A follow-up study of 42 people who had SD for spider phobia in 3 45 minute sessions showed at both 3 and 33 months the SD group were last fearful of the control group treated by relaxation without exposure

  this suggests that SD it’s likely to be helpful for people with phobias
• another strength of systematic desensitisation is that it can be used to help people with learning disabilities

  The main alternative is to SD are not suitable for people with learning disabilities because they struggle with cognitive therapies that require complex rational thought. They may also feel confused and distressed by the traumatic experience of flooding.

  This means that SD is often the most appropriate treatment for people with learning disabilities who have phobias
• strength of flooding is that it’s highly cost-effective

  A therapy is cost-effective, if it is clinically effective and not expensive

  Flooding can work in one session as opposed to say 10 sessions for SD to achieve the same result, even allowing for a longer session makes flooding more cost-effective

  This means that more people can be treated at the same cost with flooding than with SD or other therapies
• A limitation of flooding is that it is a highly unpleasant experience

  Confronting one’s phobic stimulus in an extreme form provokes tremendous anxiety

  Participants and therapist rated flooding as significantly more stressful than SD

  This raises the ethical issue for psychologists of knowingly causing stress to their clients, this isn’t a serious issue provided they obtain informed consent

  However, the traumatic nature of flooding means that dropout rates are higher than for SD