Handbook of exposure therapies

Powered by Prism. Skip to Content. Catalogue Handbook of exposure therapies. Handbook of exposure therapies Richard, David C. S ; Lauterbach, Dean L. Electronic books. Published Amsterdam; Boston [et al. This item is not reservable because: There are no reservable copies for this title.

Please contact a member of library staff for further information. Richard, Dean Lauterbach. Copyright : Writings tend to be limited to larger pieces on treating specific disorders or types of patients. A comprehensive book on the use of these treatments across patient disorders will be of great use to practitioners.

The book is divided into three sections: Foundation, Applications, and Issues. Foundation chapters considers theoretical and assessment issues. Applications chapters will discuss research literature on each disorder having been proven to be successfully treated with exposure therapy.

Issue chapters will discuss liability issues, false memory syndrome, and the use of computers and virtual reality in exposure therapy. Covers the broad range of exposure therapies in one comprehensive source Provides an integrated look at exposure therapy across a variety of disorders Each such chapter will include a case study Blends literature review and practice guidelines However, over time and with repeated exposures, the water feels less cold as the person acclimates.

Similarly, when repeatedly facing a fear-provoking stimulus in exposure therapy, the patient experiences habituation, or a natural reduction in fear response. While many clinicians aim for habituation to occur within the session, researchers have found that optimal treatment effects occur during the period of learning consolidation between sessions.

Extinction theory emerges from a classic conditioning model in which the unconditioned stimulus is a situation, place, or person that initially caused fear the unconditioned response -for example, a dog bite. Through the process of stimulus generalization, fear reactions become learned conditioned response and are elicited by other stimuli, such as dogs that are not dangerous conditioned stimuli. Because of the aversiveness of the conditioned response, fearful individuals are motivated to avoid the conditioned stimuli, thus reinforcing avoidance behavior as well as the belief that relief from fear only comes from avoidance.

Exposure therapy is thought to weaken the conditioned response through repeated exposure to the conditioned stimuli in the absence of the unconditioned stimulus. For example, exposure to dogs conditioned stimuli without being bitten absence of unconditioned stimulus weakens the relationship between the conditioned stimuli and the fear of conditioned response.

One limitation of extinction theory is that most phobic patients do not identify an initial conditioning event. Exposure to fear-provoking stimuli is thought to result in a new way of processing information and to correct the faulty fear structure. The self-efficacy theory focuses more on increasing skills and mastery over a situation or performance than on reducing a fear response directly.

Therefore, persons able to face their fear and successfully tolerate it without avoiding it or withdrawing from it begin to realize they are more capable and resilient than they had imagined. Thus, they become more willing to face their fears in different contexts, thereby generalizing treatment effects. These theoretical mechanisms of exposure are not mutually exclusive, and all might be correct for any given patient. With repeated exposures, patients experience reduced sensations of fear habituation , learn a new set of associations extinction , feel increasingly able to cope with fear self-efficacy , and generate new interpretations of the meanings of previously feared stimuli emotional processing.

Treatment guidelines for clinicians who use exposure therapy are shown in Table 3. The first step in successful exposure therapy is the development of an exposure hierarchy. The patient and clinician brainstorm as many feared external and internal stimuli as possible and then rate them in order of difficulty.

The most common ranking method is the Subjective Units of Discomfort SUD scale, which assigns a 0 to numeric value to each item. The next step is to conduct exposures in a gradual and systematic manner. During exposure therapy, safety behaviors should be eliminated to the extent possible.

Safety behaviors refer to all unnecessary actions the patient takes to feel better or to prevent feared catastrophes.

Cognitive restructuring may also be used as an adjunct to exposure therapy. Cognitive restructuring refers to identifying and challenging irrational, unrealistic, or maladaptive beliefs. In patients with anxiety disorders, 2 of the more common faulty thinking patterns ie, cognitive distortions are probability overestimation and catastrophizing. Probability overestimation refers to the overprediction of unlikely outcomes, such as the belief that a commercial flight is highly likely to crash.

Catastrophizing refers to the magnification of the consequences of aversive outcomes, such as the belief that making a mistake during a speech will lead to a lifetime of ridicule and ostracism. During the process of exposure exercises, the therapist helps the patient identify these cognitive distortions; examine the evidence for and against the beliefs; and rehearse new, more realistic ways of thinking.

We hope this information will encourage clinicians to embrace exposure-based therapies for anxiety disorders as a viable and easily accessible treatment option. Arch Gen Psychiatry. Treatment seeking by individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder from the British Psychiatric Morbidity Survey of Psychiatr Serv. The brown longitudinal obsessive compulsive study: treatments received and patient impressions of improvement.

J Clin Psychiatry. Utilization of behavioral methods in a multicenter anxiety disorders study. Davison GC. Flexible - Read on multiple operating systems and devices. Easily read eBooks on smart phones, computers, or any eBook readers, including Kindle.

We cannot process tax exempt orders online. If you wish to place a tax exempt order please contact us. Add to cart. Sales tax will be calculated at check-out. Free Global Shipping. Description Exposure Therapy refers to any clinical intervention in which a client directly confronts a source of fear. Since high levels of anxiety can not be maintained indefinitely, repeated exposure leads to decreased anxiety.

This type of treatment is effective with phobias, post traumatic stress disorder, obsessive compulsive disorders, panic, generalized anxiety, and several other disorders. It's also been found to be effective in helping to treat substance abuse.

Although exposure-based treatments have been extensively researched and reported in the literature, there is no single comprehensive treatment of exposure therapies.