behavioural phobia treatments

• background 


  phobias may persist because people avoid their phobia, they never get a chance to learn that their feared stimuli is not scary after all

  treatments therefore allow patients to unlearn negative associations and relace them with a positive response through process of relaxation , counter conditioning
• Systematic desensitisation 


  -individual constructs an anxiety hierarchy

  -relaxation training is given (breathing exercises)

  -patient asked to imagine as vividly as possible the scene at the bottom of the list and told to relax at the same time

  -once complete relaxation has been achieved they move up the hierarchy while paring each step with relaxation = graded pairing
• SD stimulus 


  Can use real stimulus or imagined stimulus

  real stimulus is always more effective and longer lasting
• SD strength 


  Effective , high success rate

  75% with simple phobias

  90% for blood-injection phobias
• SD strength

  Appropriateness , patient is in control and only moves up when they feel relaxed - shouldn’t be any ethical issues
• SD strength 


  Relatively fast and require less effort compared to other therapies

  lack of thinking means it can be successful with children and adults with learning difficulties
• SD weakness 


  Behaviour learnt under one set of conditions (therapy) doesn’t always generalise to real life

  different facing your fear alone compared to having the safety of the therapist
• Flooding 


  Consist of one long session where the patient experiences their phobia at it’s worse

  at the same time they practice relaxation until their anxiety disappears
• Flooding 


  May last about 2-3 hours

  idea behind it = fear response has a time limit
• Flooding evaluation - effectiveness 


  Shown to be more effective than SD

  however, it’s highly effective for simple phobias and less effective for other types of phobias (social phobias)

  could be because they are more likely caused by irrational thinking rather than unpleasant experiences- more complex phobias cant be treated by behaviourist treatments
• Flooding strength 


  Relatively quick compared to SD, only involved 1 single treatment session
• Flooding weakness


  Can be highly traumatic and patient experiences intense anxiety

  patient has no control = ethical issues
• Flooding weakness


  If patients quit during treatment due to extreme fear response it’s effectiveness will reduce and could make the phobia worse
• General evaluation points for both 


  Some argue the techniques aren’t dealing with the cause of phobia but only the symptoms, if symptoms are removed the cause still remains the same so symptoms could resurface