Learning approach treatment for depression & evaluation Flashcards
What is the Learning Approache’s treatment for phobias?
Systematic desensitisation
What is Systematic desensitisation?
Systematic desensitisation is a type of behavioural therapy to help effectively overcome phobias and other anxiety disorders.
What is Systematic desensitisation based on?
It is based on classical conditioning first investigated by Pavlov
What is the goal of systematic desensitisation?
When individuals possess irrational fears of an object, such as height, dogs, snakes, and close spaces, they tend to avoid it. The goal of Systematic Desensitisation is to overcome this avoidance pattern by gradually exposing patients to the phobic object until it can be tolerated.
What is the first component of systematic desensitisation?
It is teaching the patient cognitive strategies to cope with anxiety. This is necessary because it provides the patient with a means of controlling their fear, rather than letting it build until it becomes unbearable.
Give examples of coping strategies in the first component?
Relaxation training, such as meditation, is one type of coping strategy. Patients who have serious anxiety that leads to breathing problems, might be taught to focus on their breathing or to think about happy situations.
What is the second component of systematic desensitisation?
The second component of systematic desensitization is gradual exposure to the feared objects or situations. Once the patient had practiced their relaxation technique, the therapist may then present them with a photograph of the phobic stimulus (e.g. a photo of a snake) and help them calm down
How would the second component progress?
They would then present increasingly unpleasant situations: a poster of a snake, a small snake in a box in the other room, a snake in a clear box in view, touching the snake, etc.
How is the patient desensitised to the phobia?
At each step in the progression, the patient is desensitised to the phobia through the use of the coping technique. They realize that nothing bad happens to them, and the fear gradually extinguishes.
Evaluate in terms of supporting evidence.
McGrath (1990) found that 75% of patients with specific phobias showed significant improvement following the treatment. However complex phobias such as agoraphobia do not respond so well to systematic desensitisation and relapse rates for these types of social phobias are often high.
Evalute in terms ethics.
systematic desensitisation is that it is ethical as the patient is given control of the procedure and will only move on when ready and the therapists has very clear goals to follow.
Evaluate in terms of reductionist.
It is reductionist as that the treatment may not actually treat the actual cause of the phobia. According to psychodynamic psychologists the cause of the phobia may be in the unconscious mind and learning approaches such as systematic desensitisation do not attempt to address this cause.
Evaluate in terms of usefulness.
The treatment is only attempting to change the observable symptoms and therefore ignores the underlying causes. Therefore such treatments are only appropriate for a small number of disorders such as simple behaviours such as phobias and not useful for more complex disorders such as schizophrenia or depression.
Evaluate in terms of studies that showed limited effectiveness.
Barlow & Durand (1995) found that SD works for simple phobias but there is a danger of intensifying the phobia if overexposed to the stimulus in the early stages showing limited effectiveness for SD.
