Phobias

• A Phobia is an anxiety disorder involving excessive and persistent fear fo a situation or object, where exposure to the source of fear triggers an immediate anxiety response
• Social phobias are fear of social situations in which the person may be judged or embarrassed (AKA social anxiety)
• Agoraphobia is an irrational & extreme fear of places where escape is difficult e.g crowds, leaving home
• Specific phobias are phobias of a specific object e.g arachnophobia
• Emotional characteristics of phobias are excessive fear and anxiety
• Behavioural characteristics of phobias are avoidance, panic (e.g. freezing or running away), endurance
• Cognitive characteristics of phobias are irrational thinking, cognitive distortions, and selective attention to the phobic stimulus
• Flooding is a phobia treatment technique where the patient is introduced to their phobia at maximum capacity without warning with no way of fleeing
• Flooding is similar in effectiveness to alternate therapues although therre is some evidence that it is more effective than systematic desensitization
• Flooding is intense so may not be appropriate for everyone and could backfire
• Flooding can be traumatic so raises ethical issues
• Systematic Desensitization involves gradually introducing someone to their phobia in stages by working through their devised fear hierarchy
• Systematic Desensitization has a 75% success rate (McGrath et.al.)
• Systematic Desensitization works more effectively in vivo than in vitro and has long-term effects
• Systematic Desensitization needs little insight so is appropriate for many, however cannot deal with ancient phobias
• Systematic Desensitization avoids extreme distress & drop-outs as it goes at the patient's own pace
• There is evidence to support the behavioural explanation of phobias e.g. Watson & Rayner
• Watson & Rayner studied 'little Albert' and successfully conditioned him into having a phobia by association of a white rat with a loud clanging noise, which then generalised to all white fluffy objects
• The DSM-5 categories of phobias are specific phobias, social anxiety, agoraphobia
• The processes of systematic desensitisation are anxiety hierarchy, relaxation, exposure
• Flooding aims to achieve extinction by entiguishing the learned response