AO1: Treatments

• There are two behavioural treatments to treat phobias: Systematic desensitisation and flooding
• Systematic desensitisation is a behavioural therapy which aims to counter-condition the client's response to the phobic stimulus.
• During systematic desensitisation, patients are taught relaxation techniques, as reciprocal inhibition outlines that an individual cannot experience both anxiety and relaxation, as one emotion must subside.
• The client and therapist then work together to draw up a hierarchy, of least anxiety-provoking situations to most anxiety-provoking situations.
• The client then works through the stages and uses their relaxation techniques, they are only able to move on to the next stage once they have remained fully relaxed during the current stage. Eventually, they will be able to handle full-exposure to their phobic stimulus, curing the phobia
• The second behavioural therapy is flooding. Flooding involves fully-exposing the client to their phobic stimuli. As they will be unable to make their avoidance response, they will become habituated to the stimuli and anxiety will eventually subside as they realise the phobic stimuli to be harmless.