Flooding

• Flooding


  -This therapy involves immediate exposure to a scary situation.

  -Typically only has one session.

  -It stops phobic response quickly. Patient has no option to avoid the stimulus and they quickly learn that it is harmless. The learned response in extinguished when the conditioned stimulus is encountered without the unconditioned stimulus and the conditioned stimulus no longer produced the conditioned response of fear. Anxiety becomes exhausted as its a prolonged session.
• Evaluation - flooding:


  +It's cost-effective: it's highly effective so patients are free from symptoms quickly and makes treatment cheaper. It's quicker than alternatives (SD).

  -Treatment is traumatic for patient: highly traumatic. It's not unethical if patients give full consent but often patients are unwilling to see it to the end. Therefore, time and money wasted.
• Evaluation:

  -It is less effective for some types of phobias: highly effective for treating simple phobias but less so for complex phobias like social phobias (has cognitive aspects). May benefit more by using cognitive therapies as take irrational thoughts into account.