Treatments: behavioural

• Flooding:

  • patients are given immediate exposure to a frightening situation
  • flooding stops phobic responses very quickly
  • removes the option of avoidance behaviour so the patient quickly learns that the stimulus is harmless (this is known as extinction in classical conditioning)
  • it is an unpleasant experience so patients must give full informed consent before the procedure
• A learned response is extinguished if the CS (e.g. a dog) is encountered without the UCS (being bitten)
• 2. Systematic desensitisation

  • developed by Wolpe (1950s)
  • based on the principle of counter-conditioning (learning a response)
  • aims to reduce an undesirable behaviour e.g. fear/anxiety with a more desirable one e.g. relaxation
• Stages involved in systematic desensitisation (anxiety hierarchy)

  1. Patient is taught relaxation techniques
  2. Patient and therapist construct an anxiety hierarchy - a series of imagined scenes, each one causing a little more anxiety than the previous one~
  3. Patient visualises the first stage in the hierarchy whilst engaging in the relaxation response at the same time
  4. Once a stage of the hierarchy has been mastered, they move onto the next stage
  5. Patient eventually masters the most feared situation
• Systematic desensitisation: strength

  • Research shows SD works for a variety of anxiety disorders
  • Evidence: 75% of patients with a range of phobias reported that SD had helped where as 33% of patients with a similar range of phobias reported that the drug treatments had helped.
  • This suggests it is more effective than drug treatments for phobias
• Systematic desensitisation: strength

  • Quick and requires less effort than other psychotherapies
  • This means that patients are more likely to continue with the treatment, making it more likely to succeed.
  • This suggests that SD may be more appropriate than other therapies.
• Systematic desensitisation: limitation

  • SD works better with phobias that have been acquired through personal experience rather than phobias like fear of heights.
  • This means we may be biologically prepared to have a fear of certain animals/situations - it may be an evolutionary survival strategy.
  • This means that SD has limited effectiveness for treating our phobias.
• Systematic desensitisation: limitation

  • treats the symptoms, not the causes
  • if the cause of the problem is not treated, the symptoms may resurface as a different phobia.
  • this means that SD is not always completely effective.
• Flooding: strength

  • cost effective
  • comparisons to other therapies show that it is highly effective and quicker than alternatives
  • free of symptoms sooner, treatment becomes cheaper
• Flooding: limitation

  • not effective for all phobias
  • not as effective for complex phobias possibly due to the fact that they have a cognitive component
  • this means it has limited effectiveness as it cannot be used for all phobias