Specific Phobia

Specific phobia, also known as simple phobia, is an anxiety disorder characterized by persistent and unreasonable fear of something or fear of a situation, wherein such fear is not proportionate to the danger or risk of that thing or situation that a person has the fear of. The five sub-type of specific phobia are the animal, natural environment, blood injection injury, situational and others. The most common specific phobia is the animal phobia. Examples of this animal phobia include fear of dogs, snakes, insects or mice. To prevent over diagnosis of specific phobia, DSM 5 have made several changes based on the over assessment of danger or erratic fear. To be considered as one of the specific phobias, it should meet the requirements

Posttraumatic stress disorder can occur after someone experiences a traumatic event. Once the mind hits the coping threshold, it is imperative to seek professional help. The VA offers evidence-based treatments, individual, group treatments, and medications. Coping mechanisms range from individual to individual, hence the need for a diverse PTSD program. Under the evidence-based treatment there are two sections: prolonged exposure therapy and cognitive processing therapy. Prolonged exposure therapy is when someone continues to talk about their fears/trauma to gain control of feelings associated with those fears. The cognitive processing therapy is to understand the feelings associated with trauma and finding a way to replace negative feelings with positive

Foa and her colleagues (2011) created prolonged Exposure (PE) for clients trying to overcome with PTSD that is based on the emotional processing therapy (Foa, 2011). PE treatment plan includes collecting of information associated to both the traumatic experience and the trauma survivor's responses to it, the teaching of breathing retraining techniques, education, the re-experiencing of the trauma in imagination, and in vivo exposure (Foa, 2011). When compared with CPT, PE is a 10-session treatment (60-90 minutes) that is centered on both in-vivo and imaginal exposure to the trauma memory and ensuing adaptation. PE reports that repetitive stimulation of the trauma memory allows the clients to integrate new, counteractive information about themself and their world. Additionally, homework assignments in PE allow the client to face safe situations, which were formerly resolute to be threatening based upon inaccurate post-traumatic beliefs (Foa,

The fear of heights can sometimes leave people frozen in terror. There is large amount of evidence suggesting that virtual reality therapy has successfully helped alleviate conditions similar to PTSD. This is accomplished by slowly increasing the amount of stressors, as to not overload the patient with irrational fear. For example, with fear of heights, researchers can gradually increase the difficulty of the simulation, so that the height of the platform increases after every session. In a similar case study, 49 patients had volunteered to participate in a virtual reality treatment for their fear of flying. Results showed, “By the 6-month follow-up, 90% of treated participants had flown since completing treatment” (Anderson 2001). Effectiveness also hugely depends on plausibility and affordability. We need to consider if this treatment is convenient for

By using virtual reality, VA researches can recreate a PTSD suffers traumatic memories and develop treatment based on actual experiences. Chris Crowe, PhD, a researcher and psychologist with the Atlanta VA Medical Center is enthusiastic about the process and states "We believe this has very exciting potential to treat people very quickly and in a way that makes them less vulnerable to relapse,"(VA outlines PTSD research, 2010) These types of research studies are providing veterans with a better quality of life and allotting the time researchers need for long term

Developed by Edna Foa, prolonged exposure therapy exposes patients to their traumatic event over and over again while being in a safe place (Blankenship 277). Although prolonged exposure therapy is one treatment it has four main elements including education, breathing retraining, in vivo exposure, and imaginal exposure. Education consists of learning about the treatment, treatment symptoms, and goals of the treatment. Breathing retraining helps patients to relax and calm themselves when they become anxious. In vivo exposure allows patients with PTSD to be put in real-life situations that they are not comfortable with due to the trauma they have faced. Lastly, imaginal exposure allows the patients with post-traumatic stress disorder to talk through their traumatic event while it is recorded. After repeatedly talking through their event, the patient then listens to what they have said (Swan 28). Prolonged exposure therapy occurs over eight to fifteen sessions. Each session can range from 60 to 90 minutes depending on the patient and their specific needs (Blankenship 278). This treatment helps patients with post-traumatic stress disorder by allowing them to face their fears associated with the traumatic event and gain control over their emotions (Swan 28). Prolonged exposure therapy is proven to be a very effective therapy and is highly supported for the use of treating PTSD (Blankenship

It has been proven to have a better response rate.The Institute of Medicine recognized exposure therapies as the only treatment approach with sufficient empirical data to be deemed effective for PTSD (Institute of Medicine, 2007).While pharmacotherapy with SSRI can reduce symptoms, the most effective treatments involve understanding and overcoming avoidance behaviors (Foa & Rothbaum, 1998) Exposure therapy is a behavioral treatment for PTSD that aims to reduce your fear, anxiety and avoidance behavior by having you fully face, or be exposed to, thoughts, feelings or situations that are feared. During exposure therapy, the patient will face varying stimuli that stimulate the PTSD. This will go on until the intensity of the stimuli is

Exposure therapy is used to reduce “distress about trauma by confronting trauma-related thoughts, feelings, and situations that a soldier avoids due to the distress they cause” (“Prolonged Exposure Therapy”). This therapy can be affective but it also forces soldiers to relive past trauma. According to the scholarly article “”PTSD in Active Combat Soldiers: To Treat or Not to Treat”, exposure therapy “reduces PTSD symptoms and also associated with reducing depression, anger, and guilt” (Wangelin et al). This article also states the “PTSD symptoms improved from exposure therapy even when treated with the presence of depression, severe mental illness, traumatic brain injury, and substance dependence” (Wangelin et al). This article discusses how exposure therapy can be seen as a treatment for PTSD while other sources are to assist the healing process. Exposure therapy has clear results but opposing views may point out some of the ethical issues involved with the use of exposure therapy. One issue pointed out in the article is the idea of allowing suffering soldiers to revisit their traumatic pasts (Wangelin et al). Exposure therapy may be affective but if it were to fail, soldiers may be having worse symptoms of PTSD due to the repeated exposure of the trauma. This article does address this issue in their report by saying; “service members treated for PTSD who then return to combat would

If veterans do struggle with PTSD after they return from combat the Department of Veterans Affairs, a governmental agency that helps struggling veterans recover, offers two treatments. Studies have been done to see if one of the therapies is more effective than the other. There is not yet evidence that one therapy is better than the other. Cognitive processing therapy, CPT, helps by giving the vet a new way to deal with the maladaptive thoughts that come with PTSD. It also comforts them in gaining a new understanding of the traumatic events that happened to them. One of the other benefits of CPT is that it assists the person in learning how these disturbing events change the way they look at everything in life and helps them cope with that (“PTSD: National”). The second newer option of the two is prolonged exposure therapy, which is repeated exposure to these thoughts, feelings, and situations (“Most PTSD”). This type of therapy is now a central piece in the VA’s war on PTSD. “The problem with prolonged exposure is that it also has made a number of veterans violent, suicidal, and depressed, and it has a dropout rate that some researchers put at more than 50 percent, the highest dropout rate of any PTSD therapy that has been widely studied so far,”(“Trauma Post”). Both of the therapies are proven to reduce the symptoms but both have extremely high drop out rates and low follow through. It

For example, you may hear a car backfire and relive combat experiences. Or you may see a report on the news about a sexual assault and feel overcome by memories of your own assault. But to those who PTSD should not feel like there is no way out with plenty of treatment those with the disorder can/will live healthy normal lives. The first treatment is Cognitive Therapy this type of talk therapy helps you recognize the ways of thinking that are keeping you trapped. for example, negative or inaccurate ways of perceiving normal situations, For PTSD, cognitive therapy is sometimes used with exposure therapy. Exposure Therapy is a behavioral therapy that helps you safely face what you find scary so that you can learn to deal with it effectively. One approach to exposure therapy is virtual reality which allow you to re-enter the setting in which you experienced trauma. And the last form of treatment is a combination of both exposure therapy and a series of guided eye movement that helps process traumatic memories and change how you react to traumatic memories and this is called Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. But to those who don 't like therapy-style treatment there are different types of anti-depressants that can help with some of the symptoms. Like for depression or anxiety a person would take Paxil or Zoloft. And if you don 't have depression but a severe case of anxiety you would look more in taking

Given the high number of service members returning home with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, from Operation Iraqi Freedom, OIF and Operation Enduring Freedom, OEF, it has been priority of the Military Health System and Veterans Affairs to identify and implement effective treatment (This is the military, 2014). Exposure therapy is the practice of flooding the client with images of their traumatic experience in an effort to desensitize them, and help control and reduce their anxiety (DiMaurio, 2014). This essay will discuss the efficacy of group exposure therapy when administered to patients with PTSD, specifically OIF and OEF veterans and service members. The outcome in successful studies will result in a decrease in PTSD symptoms. The applicability of the results and implementation of the treatment in alternate settings will also be discussed.

Arachnophobia is an extreme or irrational fear of spiders. Someone is arachnophobic when their fear of spiders reaches a level that it is irrational, illogical and unhelpful. Arachnophobia is an everyday fear, it changes what people might do with their day depending on the likeliness of seeing a spider. As with all phobias the cause or causes can be unknown, and can vary from person to person. Some people do have a very real experience that causes initial fear, which can then stay with them, and, as they avoid the object they are scared of, they reinforce the negative experience, and over time develop a phobia. The traditional old-fashioned way to treat arachnophobia is via systematic desensitization link to phobias and fears. Systematic desensitization

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder is often a very intrusive illness that impedes an individual’s daily living. Two methods of treating Posttraumatic Stress Disorder are Prolonged Exposure therapy and eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing. Prolonged Exposure therapy is a behavior based therapy that uses slowly increasing exposure to desensitize the client (Goodson, Lefkowitz, Helstrom, & Gawrysiak, 2013). Eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing instructs the client to focus on the trauma while the therapist maintains a methodical motion in front of him/her (Albright & Thyer, 2010). This paper will review two articles focused on each of these treatment methods, and differentiate which method may be more

“Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), specifically exposure therapy, has garnered a great deal of empirical support in the literature for the treatment of anxiety disorders” (Gerardi et al., 2010). Exposure therapy is an established PTSD treatment (Chambless & Ollendick, 2001) and so is a benchmark for comparing other therapies (Taylor et al, 2003). “Exposure therapy typically involves the patient repeatedly confronting the feared stimulus in a graded manner, either in imagination or in vivo. Emotional processing is an essential component of exposure therapy” (Gerardi et al., 2010). “Exposure therapy in the virtual environment allows the participant to experience a sense of presence in an immersive, computer-generated, three-dimensional,

Direct exposure therapy for illogical worry of spiders in this research study appeared to be more effective if it was followed by sleep. Psychiatric therapy for arachnophobia anxiety, the research recommended, should be combined with healthy and balanced rest. It appears that our human brains seem to utilize rest, possibly REM sleep particularly, to improve new psychological memories.