What is the most effective therapy for specific phobias?
Specific phobia Although exposure therapy is considered the most effective therapy for specific phobias, exposure can be supplemented with cognitive restructuring strategies as well.
Can a psychologist prescribe medication for phobias?
There are currently several types of medication that are prescribed for phobias. In most states, psychologists are not permitted to prescribe medications, although this is slowly changing. However, no mental health practitioner with less than a doctoral degree is permitted to prescribe medication in any state.
How can cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) help with phobia?
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is often the first-line of treatment for phobia. It can help you overcome the negative automatic thoughts that lead to phobic reactions, teaching you to gradually change the way you think to help you overcome your fear.
What is the medical model of phobias?
The medical model places emphasis on the genetic and brain chemistry components of phobias. Medications are prescribed to balance the chemicals in the brain. There are currently several types of medication that are prescribed for phobias. In most states, psychologists are not permitted to prescribe medications, although this is slowly changing.
What is the best medication for phobias?
Beta blockers, including Tenormin (atenolol) and Inderal LA (propranolol), are sometimes prescribed as a short-term treatment to help control trembling, sweating, and other physical symptoms of phobia-related anxiety. While medication is helpful for some, others find the benefits aren't worth the side effects.
What is the medical model of phobias?
The medical model places emphasis on the genetic and brain chemistry components of phobias. Medications are prescribed to reduce the symptoms associated with phobias. Studies show that in phobias, cognitive behavioral approaches tend to be more effective long-term than medication approaches.
How can a phobia be cured?
This model favors psychotherapy as a preferred treatment. Many people who live with phobias are best treated with a combination of medication and psychotherapy.
What causes phobias in 2020?
The latest studies show that there is likely a complex interaction of factors including genetics, brain chemistry, environmental triggers, and learned behavior.
What is exposure therapy?
Exposure therapy is often part of a cognitive behavioral treatment program, but can also be incorporated into your daily life.
Can you get help for a phobia?
Getting help for your phobia may feel uncomfortable and anxiety-provoking—but you can take comfort in the fact that you are taking the best first step to alleviate your anxiety, manage your phobia, and start enjoying your life.
Is phobia a first line treatment?
Increasingly, mental health professionals and patients are turning to alternative treatments to augment traditional means of treating phobias, but these options are not considered first-line treatments and often come with their own set of side effects.
What is specific phobia?
Specific phobias are among the most prevalent psychological problems, and are often associated with serious life impairment and complex symptom profiles, including physiological symptoms, impairing coping and avoidance behaviors, and unhelpful or distorted cognitions. Therefore, a thorough assessment using multiple methods is important to evaluate the idiosyncrasies of each client’s presentation. The purpose of this chapter is to review the elements of a comprehensive, evidence-based assessment and treatment plan for specific phobia. The chapter provides an overview of diagnostic and clinical features of specific phobia, reviews the empirical status of commonly used assessment and treatment methods, and concludes with recommendations for assessment and intervention.
What are the most common psychological problems?
Specific phobias are among the most prevalent psychological problems, and are often associated with serious life impairment and complex symptom profiles, including physiological symptoms, impairing coping and avoidance behaviors, and unhelpful or distorted cognitions. Therefore, a thorough assessment using multiple methods is important ...
Body of Evidence
Phobias are often considered relatively minor mental health issues, given their ability to be avoided, and the consequent lack of distress prospective clients endure. Nevertheless, they can prove incredibly debilitating, and significantly influence the quality of life experienced by the person in question.
Treating Phobias with Virtual Reality
A key component of the current gold standard in phobia treatment, Cognitive Behavioural therapy (CBT), is the clients confronting their fear. This has traditionally occurred in either real life situations, or through imaginal exposure.
What is CBT treatment?
CBT comprises the overwhelming evidence of empirically supported treatments for a wide variety of problems including depression, eating disorders and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (American Psychological Association (APA) Task Force on the Promotion and Dissemination of Psychological Procedures, 1993; Chambless & Hollon, 1998).
Is CBT good for anxiety?
CBT is also an enduring treatment for anxiety disorders including obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), generalized anxiety disorder ( GAD), and for specific phobias (Hofmann & Smits, 2008). Studies have shown that for patients with anxiety disorders, including specific phobia, exposure-based CBT can significantly reduce the fear associated with ...
What is the treatment for specific phobias?
Specific phobias. In vivo exposure is considered the treatment of choice for specific phobia. In vivo exposure may involve flooding (exposure to the most intense feared stimulus) or graduai exposure (systematic exposure of gradually increasing intensity).
Who invented CBT?
The origins of CBT can be traced back in part to the theories of early researchers such as B. F. Skinner and Joseph Wolpe, who pioneered the behavioral therapy movement in the 1950s. Behavioral therapy supposes that changing behaviors leads to change in emotions and cognitions such as appraisals.
What is the CPT component of PTSD?
Likewise, although CPT for PTSD focuses on the cognitive beliefs about the causes and consequences related to the trauma, a component of CPT involves writing a detailed account of the traumatic event and reading it to the therapist, thereby engaging the patient in exposure in addition to cognitive therapy.
What is behavioral therapy?
Since its introduction, behavioral therapy has evolved to include cognitive psychotherapy, pioneered by the early work of psychologists such as Albert Eilis and Aaron T. Beck. Cognitive therapy focuses on changing cognitions, which is proposed to change emotions and behaviors.
How many sessions of cognitive therapy are needed for anxiety?
Cognitive therapy is typically time-limited to about 20 sessions or less, and is problem-focused on the issues the patient identifies as of primary concern.
Is there a systematic review of CBT for anxiety?
Therefore, a systematic review of the CBT treatments for each anxiety disorder is beyond the scope of this paper. However, despite the large number of diverse CBT protocols for treating anxiety disorders, important similarities exist between these various treatments which provide a basis for discussion.
Is exposure therapy effective for anxiety?
The efficacy and effectiveness of exposure therapy has been well documented for anxiety disorders, and exposure therapy is considered the treatment of choice for many forms of pathological anxiety. Post-traumatic stress disorder.
Why are phobias maintained?
From a behavioral perspective, specific phobias are maintained because of avoidance of the phobic stimuli so that the individual does not have the opportunity to learn ...
How long does a spider phobia treatment last?
The treatment usually last a number of hours, and can be administered in one very long session (e.g., one 3-hour session for spider phobia) or across multiple sessions (e.g., three to eight 1-1.5-hour-long sessions). A range of specific phobias respond well to in vivo treatment, although treatment acceptance and dropout can be a problem.
Is systematic desensitization better than in vivo?
Treatment using systematic desensitization tends to take longer than in vivo exposure , and appears to be more effective at changing subjective anxiety than at reducing avoidance. Thus, it is not recommended as the first line of treatment if a client is willing to try in vivo or an alternate form of exposure therapy.
Does cognitive therapy help with flying phobia?
Evidence regarding the utility of cognitive therapy for flying phobia is mixed, and it is not clear that adding cognitive therapy to exposure therapy for other phobia types improves outcomes.
Can a phobia be treated in vivo?
This therapy appears to be useful for phobias that may be difficult to treat in vivo; namely, flying phobias (where repeated plane flights are impractical) and height phobias, but more studies are needed to demonstrate its efficacy for a broader range of phobia subtypes.
What is a specific phobia?
Specific phobia is characterized by a marked and persistent fear of a specific object or situation that causessignificant life interference or distress (APA, 1994). With a lifetime prevalence of 12.5% (Kessler, Berglund, & Demler,2005) specific phobia ranks as the most common anxiety disorder. Specific phobias are currently divided into foursubtypes: situational (e.g., fears of enclosed spaces, flying), natural environment (e.g., fears of heights, storms, water),animal (e.g., fears of snakes, spiders, dogs), and blood/injection/injury (e.g. fears of dental or medical procedures,injections, seeing blood), with the animal and natural environment subtypes being more prevalent (Curtis, Magee,
What is EMDR therapy?
Originally developed byShapiro (1989)for thetreatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), EMDR involves presenting imagery instructions related to thetraumatic memory while the patient engages in rapid eye movements. The patient is instructed to focus on a disturbingimage, memory, emotion, or cognition, while the therapist moves a finger across the patient's visual field and the patienttracks the finger's movement. One aim of the treatment is to change the cognitions regarding the trauma from negative tomore positive (seeShapiro, 1989, 1995for protocol details). Adapted for specific phobias, the imaginal exposurecomponent consists of imagining confrontation with the phobic target, rather than a traumatic event, as in PTSD.Although proponents of EMDR consider this treatment to be a unique modality in its own right, the therapyundoubtedly contains exposure as a central element. In fact, some have argued that the effects of this technique areattributable entirely to the imaginal exposure component (Pitman et al., 1996; Renfrey & Spates, 1994).
Does exposure augmented with cognitive techniques outperform exposure treatment alone?
Five studies were available for this comparison. Contrary to prediction, exposure augmented with cognitiveprocedures did not outperform exposure treatment alone. The overall composite effect size was not significant, andcomparisons of the two treatments for each assessment domain separately revealed no significant advantage forcombining exposure with cognitive techniques.
Is there evidence that phobias are hesitant to seek treatment?
There is now compelling evidence suggesting that those suffering from specific phobias are hesitant to seektreatment de spite the availability of effective interventions . Based on data from the ECA study, only 31% of thosemeeting DSM-III criteria for phobia sought treatment (Regier, Narrow, & Rae, 1993), and of those, only 43.4% sought
Is all exposure treatment created equal?
Telch (2004)has argued that not all exposure treatments are created equal. Indeed, studies that have manipulatedparameters of exposure provide evidence suggesting that the way in which exposure treatment is conducted can