AO3

• Research support: SD is successful for a range of disorders - McGrath et al. (1990) reported that about 75% of patients with phobias respond to SD. The key to success appears to lie in actual contact with the feared stimulus, and therefore in vivo techniques are more successful
• Strength - Relatively fast and require less effort on the patients part (compared to CBT), can be self-administered, ‘lack of thinking’ useful for people who lack insight into motivation/emotions (learning disabilities)
• Weakness - Ohman et al. (1975) suggest that SD may not be as effective in treating phobias that have an underlying evolutionary survival component e.g. dark, height, snakes = SD will not be useful for innate phobias
• • Behavioural therapies may not work with certain phobias as the symptoms are only the tip of the iceberg. If the symptoms are removed the cause still remains, and the symptoms may then resurface—possibly in another form, known as symptom substitution
• Strength – flooding is an effective treatment that is relatively quick compared to CBT (Ougrin, 2011)
• Choy et al. (2007) report that both flooding and SD were effective, but flooding was more effective out of the two at treating phobias
• Less effective for some types of phobias – social phobias (due to them having cognitive aspects)
• Flooding is not for everyone as it can be a highly traumatic procedure. Therefore, they may quit half way through which reduces the effectiveness of the treatment