The Behavioural Approach To Treating Phobias Flashcards
What is meant by systematic desensitisation?
A behavioural therapy designed to gradually reduce phobic anxiety using the principle of classical conditioning.
What is meant by flooding?
A behavioural therapy in which the patient is exposed to their phobic stimulus but without the build up of an anxiety hierarchy.
What are the 3 processes involved in systematic desensitisation?
1.anxiety hierarchy: list of situations relating to the phobic stimulus that provoke anxiety arranged in order from least to most frightening.
relaxation: relaxation techniques such as breathing exercises which are used throughout the anxiety hierarchy.
3.exposure: finally exposed to their phobic stimulus whilst in a relaxed state.
Outline the procedure involved in flooding.
-The client experiences inescapable exposure to their phobic stimulus, there is no anxiety hierarchy.
-procedure does not allow for avoidance behaviour and assumes that high levels of anxiety and fear cannot be sustained and so will eventually fall.
What is one strength of behavioural therapies?
- Evidence for effectiveness.
Gilroy et al followed up 42 people who had systematic desensitisation for a spider phobia.
found that at both 3 and 33 months, the systematic desensitisation group showed a significant reduction in their symptoms for their phobia compared to the control group who did not.
What are two limitations of behavioural therapies?
- Ethical issues
highly traumatic - involves inescapable exposure to a phobic stimulus.
Schumacher et al - clients and therapists rated flooding as more stressful than systematic desensitisation.
Ethical issues - raised as the therapist is knowingly causing their patient stress and trauma.
-unpleasant nature of this therapy means that attrition rates are likely to be very high resulting in few successful treatments.
- They do not tackle the underlying cause of a phobia.
Freud reported a case of a young boy who had a phobia of horses. discovered that the boy’s actual problem was intense envy of his father - this is what was leading to his phobia.
the boy was unable to express his envy and so his anxiety was projected on the horse.
phobia was only cured when he accepted his feelings about his father and was able to overcome his envy.
This shows that behavioural therapies can only erase the symptoms associated with a phobia and not the actual phobia itself.
Therefore, systematic desensitisation and flooding are only suitable for less complex phobias - complex phobias perhaps need to be treated using alternative methods for example, cognitive therapy.
