Psychopathology - Behavioral approach - treatments Flashcards
what are the two types of treatments?
Flooding or systematic desensitisation
what does counter conditioning do ?
part of systematic desensitsation - it helps remove an anexiety response and it with a relaxation response.
what does counter conditioning deal with?
avoidance behaviour
what concept is counter conditioning based on?
reciprocal conditioning
What is reciprocal conditioning?
The idea that you cannot be in two emotional states at the same time
What 3 steps does systematic desentisation involve?
Hierarchy of anxiety
Relaxation technique
Graduated exposure
What is hierarchy of anxiety
Listing least to most anxiety provoking situation
What are relaxation techniques?
Techniques which help feel calmer. Eg deep breathing or exercises
What is graduated exposure?
When the patient works through the hierarchy of anxiety list and everytime they feel anxious they use a relaxation technique, they can’t work their way up if they are not cam
What is flooding?
Flooding involves immediate exposure to the phobia, not graduated and there is no escape.
Why does flooding work?
The anxiety response can only be sustained for a while after the anxiety response will subside and
The patient will feel calm.
Why do you have to be in a calm state?
Now you would associate the phobic situation with the relaxed state.
Evaluation of sd strengths (3)
Effective therapy
Diverse range of people
Preferred choice of clients
Evaluation of SD - weakness (2)
Problems with using ‘in vitro’
Sd may not deal with underlying cause
Sd may notdeal with the underlying cause
Flooding evaluation - strengths (2)
-Quicker treatment
- effective
Evaluation-flooding weakness (2)
-Can be traumatic
- not effective for complex phobias
Difference between invivo and invitro
Invivo desentisation is a confrontation of the real situation or object that causes the anxiety whereas invitro desentisiation is corrried out through imagery of the feared object situation
Explain the evaluation of sd ettecive therapy
Effective treatment for specific phobias . Capafons et al (1998) carried out a study on 41 peoz0ple with a fear of flying. SD therapy was given to 20 people and the other 21 acted as the control group (no therapy given). The researchers found that the participants who had recieved SD showed reduced anxiety about flying in a flight stimulation compared to control group. This shows that SD is effective in reducing anxiety in acrophobic patients. SD is effective for a wide range of phobias (espeicially when used in vivo) as another researcher reported that about 75% of phobics respond to SD.
explain strength of sd - diverse range of people
- suitable for range of clients - alternative such as flooding and cognitive therapies are not suited for some clients - e.g young children or those with certain health conditions or learning difficulties - they may struggle to understand what is happening during blooding - or to engage with cognitive therapies which required reflection - for these types of clients SD is most appropriate treatment.
explain the strngth of sd - preffered choice of clients
- often the clients preffered choice of treatment - given a choice between flooding or sd choose sd - this is because it dosent caause the same level of trauma as flooding - sd allows people to make progress in small steps in their own time which allows them to be in control . - another reason is that sd include some pleasent elements - like time talking with a therapist - reflected in low refusal rates and low attrition rates for SD. this makes SD more suitable for a wider range of clients.
explain the weakeness - problems using in vitro
limitaion of in vitro SD - relies on clients ability to be able to imagine a fearful situation . some people cannot create a vivid image and thus SD is not effective. furthermore , in vitro SD may be effective for a client in a therepuetic situation but there is no guarantee that it will work for them once they face their situation in the real world.
Explain the weakness of SD - may not not deal with underlying cause
another limitation of sd is that it does not deal with the real underlying cause of the development of phobias and anxiety disorders but only with the symptoms. for example the psychodynamic approach claims that many phobic symptoms are often the product of repressed unconscious conflict in the mind. so changing a persons behavior to deal with the phobia does not eliminate the disorder. this may lead to symptom substitution which means the phobia is removed this time but not the underlying causes which may lead this to reappeasr as another behavioral symptom.
explain the strength of flooding - quicker treatment
more cost effect treatment than other therapies. this is because flooding does not require a hierarchy of fear responses to be constructed. instead the therapy involves exposing the client to the most feared situation. this means that the therapy involves less time and is therefore less expensive than sd. this is a strength as id clients are treated more quickly this makes it more cost effective for health service providers (e.g nhs)
explain the strength of flooding - effective
apart from being a quick treatment compared to other therapies. there is also supporting research evidence to show that flooding tends to be more effective. research has suggested that when compared to other forms of treatment like sd and cbt flooding is significantly more effective (choy et al) however another review concluded that sd and flooding were equally effective in the treatment of phobias.
explain the weakness of flooding - can be traumatic
a weakness of flooding as a treatment is that although ut us a cist effective solution it can be highly traumatic for clients and cause a high level of anxiety. although the client provides informed consent there are many who do not complete their course of the treatment. this is because they are placed under an anxiety provoking situation for many hours and find such an experience too stressful. this means that flooding can be a waste of time and money if clients do not finish their therapy and thus may not be a very effective form of a treatment
explain the weakness of flooding - not effective for complex phobias
does not work on all types of phobias and appears to be less effecctive on complex phobias such as social phobias. one of the reasons is tha social phobia has a cognitive elemnt to them e.g a sufferer of social phobia does not just experience anxiety but also has negative thoughts about the social situation. this suggests that for certain types of phobias cognitive therapies such as cbt may be more benefcial because they tackle the irrational thinking aspect of phobias.
