Behavioural app to treating phobias Flashcards
(12 cards)
Two ways of treating phobias
Systematic desensitisation
Flooding
What is systematic desensitisation
A form of behavioural therapy used to treat phobias and other anxiety disorders.
Includes:
counterconditioning
relaxation
desensitisation hierarchy
what is counterconditioning
Patient is taught a new association that runs counter to the original association. Taught, through classical conditioning, to associate the phobic stimulus with a new response, i.e. relaxation instead of fear. In this way their anxiety is reduced - they are desensitised.
What is relaxation?
teach the patient relaxation techniques. eg: patient focusing on their breathing and taking slow, deep breaths or being mindful of “here and now can help, as well as focusing on a particular object or visualising a peaceful scene.
What is a desensitisation hierarchy?
Gradually introducing the person to the feared situation one step at a time so it is not as
overwhelming.
A series of imagined scenes, each one causing more anxiety than the last
At each stage the patient practises relaxation so the situation becomes more familiar, less overwhelming and their anxiety diminishes.
Step 1: taught how to relax muscles completely
2: therapist and patient construct a desensitisation hierarchy
3: work way through hierarchy, visualising each anxiety-evoking event while engaging in relaxation response
4: master each step before moving on
5: masters feared situation
What is flooding
A form of behavioural therapy used to treat phobias and other anxiety disorders.
A client is exposed to (or imagines) an extreme form of the threatening situation under relaxed conditions until the anxiety reaction is extinguished.
Immersed in the experience in one long session, experiencing their phobia at its worst. The session continues until the patient’s anxiety has disappeared.
The procedure can be conducted in vivo (actual exposure) or virtual reality can be used.
Rationale: A person’s fear response (and the release of adrenaline underlying this) has a time limit.
As adrenaline levels naturally decrease, a new stimulus-response link can be learned - the feared stimulus is now associated with a non-anxious response.
Systematic desensitisation eval
str: effectiveness
lim: not app for all phobias
SD str: effectiveness
Research has found that SD is successful for a range of phobias.
McGrath et al: reported that about 75% of patients with phobias respond to SD.
Choy: The key to success appears to lie with actual contact with the feared stimulus, so in vivo techniques are more successful than ones just using pictures or imagining the feared stimulus (in vitro)
Often a number of different exposure techniques are involved - in vivo, in vitro and also modelling, where the patient watches someone else who is coping well with the feared stimulus (Comer, 2002).
This demonstrates the effectiveness of SD, but also the value of using a range of different exposure techniques.
SD lim: not appropriate for all phobias
Öhman et al: suggest that SD may not be as effective in treating phobias that have an underlying evolutionary survival component (e.g. fear of the dark, fear of heights or fear of dangerous animals), than in treating phobias which have been acquired as a result of personal experience.
This suggests that SD can only be used effectively in tackling some phobias.
Flooding AO3
str: effectiveness
lim: individual diffs
Flooding str: effectiveness
Flooding can be an effective treatment for those who stick with it and it is relatively quick (compared to CBT).
Choy et al: reported that both SD and flooding were effective but flooding was the more effective of the two at treating phobias.
On the other hand, another review (Craske) concluded that SD and flooding were equally effective in the treatment of phobias.
This shows that flooding is an effective therapy, albeit just one of several options.
Flooding lim: individual differences
Not for every patient
Can be highly traumatic= may quit during treatments which reduces the ultimate effectiveness of the therapy for some people.
Individual differences in responding to flooding therefore limit the effectiveness of the therapy.
