There is strong research support for the role of learning for example, Watson’s study on little albert demonstrated how phobias can be created through the process of classical conditioning - provided strong support
However there is little evidence that severe psychopathology can be caused the same way for example, schizophrenia. This reduces the validity of the approach
Support comes from treatments such as systematic desensitisation which can be effective for treating disorders such as phobias but not for complex disorders like schizophrenia.
The theory is also reductionistic reduces complex psychopathological problems to simple learning and ignores the influence of biological and cognitive approaches.
Treatments
The first treatment is Systematic desensitisation. This is when you form of counter conditioning where the therapist attempts to replace the fear response by an alternative and harmless response. This Involves using a hierarchy of increasingly fearful situations. For spider phobias the therapist would ask the personal to list situations from least to most fearful. Therapist trains the client in deep relaxation techniques is the alternative and harmless response which aim to replace fear with relaxation. The therapist trains the client to visualise the least feared situation which perform relaxation technique once they feel comfortable they are asked to imagine the next situation on the hierarchy the same process happens. Over sessions the client will cope with every level of the hierarchy, although they can stop at any time and restart at a lower level.
The next treatment is flooding. This is when you remove the learned association between stimulus and the response. This involves inescapable exposure to the feared object or situation that lasts until the fear response disappears. For example someone who is has claustrophobia might be shut in a small room until their initial high levels of anxiety reduces.
The last treatment is aversion therapy. This aims to associate undeniable behaviour with an unpleasant stimulus. This can be used as therapy for addictive states. Then you pair an unpleasant or punishing stimulus with, for instance smoking or drinking. One way to do this is to make the person feel sick using pills whilst they are smoking. Through classical conditioning the feeling of sickness is associated with smoking and should act to prevent smoking in the future.
Assumption of the behavioural approach, that all behaviour is learned through simple conditioning principles, mean that therapy targets these associations. Systematic desensitisation can be very effective in phobias. The success rate 60 and 90% have been reported for spider phobias and blood infection phobias.
However there are ethical issues. It can cause the patient intense fear and anxiety. Therefore it’s important to be careful when monitoring them to ensure there are no long term negative consequences for the client
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ellouise1997hotmailcom (student)
