Psychological Approach to Treating Abnormality

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Faris Feroz Discuss One of the Psychological Approach to Treating Abnormality The behavioural approach to abnormality is that abnormal behaviour is the consequence of abnormal learning from the environment. They are learnt in the through classical conditioning, operant conditioning and social learning. Systematic desensitization is a technique based on the principals of classical conditioning and what is learnt (conditioned) can be unlearnt, through a step-by-step method. One of the most successful behavioural therapies is systematic desensitization. This therapy uses classical and operant conditioning to change the behaviour response to certain stimuli and is designed to reduce distressing levels of anxiety. It is used most often to treat phobic disorders in which it has 80-90% success rate. The therapy generally begins with the client being taught to relax through progressive relaxation training where the patient learns breathing exercises and muscle control. After a few sessions, the patient is then asked to imagine an unthreatening version of the stimulus. The client should associate this imagined stimulus with the relaxation and not with anxiety. This process is very important to the success of this therapy because of reciprocal inhibition – this is where one response is inhibited or stopped because it is incompatible with relaxation (the two cannot co-occur). The stimuli increase incrementally, moving up an anxiety hierarchy. The goal of this process is that an individual will learn to cope and overcome the fear in each step of the hierarchy, which will lead to overcoming the last step of the fear in the hierarchy. Systematic desensitization is generally considered to be the most effective treatment for a number of anxiety disorders, particularly phobias. It is estimated that 80-90% of simple phobias are reduced in severity using this therapy. Although
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