Eval of Flooding

• Effectiveness


  A strength of flooding as a treatment for phobias is that it appears to be an effective treatment
• Flooding effectiveness


  • Wolpe (1973) took a girl who was scared of cars, and drove her around for hours. Initially the girl was hysterical but she eventually calmed down when she realized that her situation was safe, from then on, she associated a sense of ease with cars.
  • Choy et al (2007) reported that flooding was more effective than systematic desensitization at treating phobias
• Flooding effectiveness


  • Flooding is a successful treatment for phobias
• Limitation of flooding


  Although flooding is highly effective for treating simple phobias it appears to be less effective for more complex phobias like social phobias
• Reason for less effectiveness for social phobias


  Social phobias have cognitive aspects, for example, a sufferer of a social phobia does not simply experience an anxiety response but thinks unpleasant thoughts about the social situation
• Suggestion for treating social phobias


  This type of phobia may benefit more from cognitive therapies because such therapies tackle the irrational thinking
• Effectiveness of flooding


  The effectiveness of flooding as a method of treating phobias is more dependent on the type of phobia
• Appropriateness of flooding


  A criticism of flooding as a treatment for phobias is that it can be a highly traumatic experience
• Cost-benefit analysis for flooding


  It is important that a cost-benefit analysis is carried out before engaging with flooding as it can be psychologically harmful (although the cost-benefit analyses may regard the long term benefits of getting rid of the phobia as outweighing the short term costs of distress)
• Ethical concerns with flooding


  Flooding is not unethical (patients must give fully informed consent and they must be fully prepared before the session), however, it might be viewed to be too traumatic for children, and they may not be able to fully understand what they are consenting too
• Limitation of flooding


  Many patients who start with flooding are unwilling to see it through to the end, which is a limitation of flooding because time and money may be wasted preparing patients only to have them refuse to start or complete treatment
• Psychodynamic criticism of flooding


  The psychodynamic model claims that flooding (and the other behavioural therapies in general e.g. SD) focuses only on symptoms and ignores the causes of abnormal behaviour
• Psychoanalytic view on symptom substitution


  Psychoanalysts claim that the symptoms are merely the tip of the iceberg - the outward expression of deeper underlying emotional problems. Psychoanalysts believe that whenever symptoms are treated without any attempt to work out the deeper underlying problems, then the problem will only show itself in another way, through different symptoms. This is known as symptom substitution.
• Behaviourist view on symptom substitution


  Behaviourists reject this criticism and claim that we need not look beyond the behavioural symptoms as the symptoms are the disorder.