Systematic desensitation Flashcards
What is systematic desnsitisation?
Decreasing your level of anxiety or fear fear very gently and gradually.It is used in treatment of anxiety disorders and phobias
What is the fear hierarchy?
This is when the client and therapist construct a fear hirearchy. This is a lidt of situations in which the client would feel anxiety, arranged from least to most anxiety produced. Then the client decides which treatment goals they want to work towards.
What is graduated exposure?
Over the course of 6 to 12 sesions the client is graduall brought into contact their phobic object or situation. They start at the bottom of the fear hierarchy and gradually work their way upwards. At each level of exposure they are encouraged to use their relaxation ttraining until they are able to completely relax at the level.The treatment is complete when client has reached their treatment goals.
What are the three steps of systematic desnesitation?
- Fear hierarchy
-Relaxation training
-Graduated exposure
What is relaxation training?
The client is taught diffrent techniqques for relaxing. These would probably include controlling breathing and muscular tension by using progressive muscle relaxation and might inclue more.
What are the two ways exposure can be done?
- In vitro
- In vivo
What does In vitro mean?
The client imagines exposure to the phobic stimulus.
What does In vivo mean?
The client is actually exposed to the phobic stimulus
What is reciprocal inhibition?
Is the idea that two contrasting phisological states such as anxiety and relaxation cannot exist at thre same time.
Supporting evidence from Wolpe?
Wolpe reported on 39 cases and found systematic desnstiation was completely or partially sucessfull for 91% of the sample. The other 9% unsucessful were mostly due to special problems that did not allow for proper treatment.
Research support from Denholtz, Hall and Mann in 1978.
It was found that 60% of clients who were treated for a flying phobia continued to fly during the 3 1/2 year follow up.
Systematic desnstiation is more ethical than flooding.
The treatment is considered to be more ethical than others based on classical conditioning eg - flooding. This is because the patient is given more control in the procedure will only move up their fear hierarchy where they are ready to.
Some psychologists argue that systemtic desensitisation does not deal with the ropt cause of phobias and therefore does not offer a full cure.
SD may appear to resolve a problem but eliminating or supressing symptoms may result in other symptoms appearing where patients could develop further phobic responses to diffrent new things.
However SD is not always sucessful.
Complex and social phobia like agoraphobia do not respond so well and relapse rates are high. Craske and Barlow found that between 60% and 80% of agoraphobics show some improvment after treatment but it was only slight and clients often relapse completely after 6 months.
