phobias

• PRESENTATION TITLE 1 20XX
• Watch and observe


  1. What do you notice about Ron's behaviour?

  2. What emotions do you think he experiences?

  3. How do you think Ron processed being around the spider?
• DSM


  Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental health disorders
• It is published by the American Psychiatric Association
• It is updated every so often and the current one in use is the 5th edition published in 2013 so we call it DSM-5
• Phobia


  An anxiety disorder and is an extreme, irrational reaction to an object or a situation
• Categories of phobias recognised by the DSM

  • Specific phobias- object/ stimuli
  • Social anxiety (social phobia) fear of social situations
  • Agoraphobia- fear of outside spaces or public areas without the ability to exit or escape/ feelings trapped
• Behavioural characteristics


  • Panic- crying, screaming, running away. In child might be freezing, clinging, tantrum
  • Avoidance- conscious effort to get away from fear which might affect daily life
  • Endurance- opposite to avoidance. Person may stay in the room with the phobia to keep an eye on it
• Anxiety


  Unpleasant state of high arousal & difficult to be positive or relax
• Fear


  Immediate response that is intense but experienced for shorter amount of time than anxiety
• Emotional response is unreasonable/ irrational
• Cognitive characteristics of phobias

  • Selective attention- difficult to look away/ concentrate from phobic stimuli
  • Irrational beliefs- thoughts about phobia have little to no basis in reality
  • Cognitive distortions- inaccurate / unrealistic perception
• An anxiety disorder characterised by extreme fear of object or situation
• What can cause phobias?

  • Faulty cognitions
  • Chemical imbalance in the brain
  • Learned behaviour (e.g. negative reinforcement)
  • Associations between stimuli (e.g. classical conditioning)
• Two-process model


  • 1. Phobias are acquired by classical conditioning.
  • 2. After this, the phobias are continued through operant conditioning.
• Learning through classical conditioning (learning by association)

  1. John Watson and Rosalie Rayner (1920) created a phobic response in a 9month old baby called little Albert.

  2. Albert did not display any anxiety at the start of the study.

  3. He was shown a white rat that he tried to play with.

  4. However, the study set out to give Albert the phobia.

  5. Whenever the white rat was presented to Albert, the researchers paired this with a loud sound with an iron bar close to Albert's ears. This sound frightened Albert.
• Negative reinforcement


  Occurs when an individual avoids a situation that is unpleasant. This therefore increases the behaviour
• Biological preparedness


  The idea that organisms are biologically predisposed to quickly learning associations between stimuli, responses, and reinforcers
• Individuals who avoided snakes and high places would be more likely to survive long enough and pass on their genes than those who did not
• Evaluation of behavioural explanation

  • Strength: Real-world application in exposure therapy (systematic desensitisation)
  • Weakness: Does not account for cognitive aspects of phobias
  • Weakness: DiNardo et al (1988) suggests the diathesis stress model
  • Alternative explanation: Evolutionary factors involved which creates the phobia of snakes or the dark which associates to the past
• Systematic Desensitization


  1. Treatment designed to gradually expose an individual to a phobic stimuli to reduce anxiety.

  2. This treatment uses the principles of classical conditioning.

  3. If a person can learn to relax in the presence of their phobia then they will be cured.

  4. When the phobic stimulus is paired with relaxation instead of anxiety, it allow the individual to learn a new response. We call this process counter conditioning.
• 3 processes involved in Systematic Desensitisation

  1. Relaxation

  2. The anxiety hierarchy

  3. Exposure
• Relaxation


  The individual is taught relaxation techniques, for example breathing techniques, muscle relaxation strategies, or mental imagery techniques.
• The anxiety hierarchy


  After learning relaxation techniques, you'll develop a fear hierarchy for the phobia or feared situation. This hierarchy typically involves 10 levels of fear.
• Exposure


  According to systematic desensitisation, two emotional states cannot exist at the same time, a theory known as reciprocal inhibition. The patient gradually moves their way up the hierarchy through gradual exposure until they are completely relaxed in the most feared situation; at this point systematic desensitisation is successful when you can expose them to the phobic stimuli.
• Strength of Systematic Desensitisation

  • Effective in treating phobias
  • Can be used with people who have learning difficulties
  • Virtual reality (VR) is an alternative to real life exposure
• Weakness of Systematic Desensitisation

  • Not appropriate for all phobias
  • Symptom substitution - might mask the symptoms and not tackle the underlying issue of the phobia
• Flooding


  Involves exposing people with a phobia to their phobic stimulus but without a gradual build up. Instead, flooding involves immediate exposure to a very frightening situation.
• How flooding works


  1. It works by not allowing the patient to avoid their phobia. The aim is to show the patient that their phobia is harmless. This method stops phobic responses quickly.

  2. In classical conditioning this is called extinction. A learned response is extinguished when the conditioned stimulus is encountered without the unconditioned stimulus the result is that the conditioned stimulus no longer produces the conditioned response (fear)

  3. A person's response and release of adrenaline, underlying this has a time limit. As adrenaline levels naturally decrease, a new stimuli response link can be learned- the feared response can then be reassociated.
• If therapist allows client out too early, then they run the risk of reinforcing the phobia as the client would have successfully managed to avoid the phobic stimulus.
• Strength of Flooding


  • Quick and cost- effective treatment
  • Can be an effective treatment for those that decide to stick with it
• Weakness of Flooding


  • Not suitable for everyone and ethical issues
  • Can be a highly traumatic procedure
  • Might not be suitable for individuals with medical conditions such as heart conditions
  • Symptom substitution only masks symptoms of phobias and do not tackle the underlying cause