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How effective is flooding therapy?
The advantage to flooding is that it is quick and usually effective. There is, however, a possibility that a fear may spontaneously recur. This can be made less likely with systematic desensitization, another form of a classical condition procedure for the elimination of phobias. In systematic desensitization (SD), relaxation training is followed by gradual (usually imaginary) exposure to the feared stimuli starting with the least feared stimulus. In contrast, flooding involves immediate exposure to the stimulus. Flooding is a specific technique of exposure therapy, which is a type of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). Disadvantages. Flooding can be costly in terms of wasted bandwidth. While a message may only have one destination it has to be sent to every host. In the case of a ping flood or a denial of service attack, it can be harmful to the reliability of a computer network. Standing flood waters can also spread infectious diseases, contain chemical hazards, and cause injuries. Each year, flooding causes more deaths than any other hazard related to thunderstorms. The most common flood deaths occur when a vehicle is driven into hazardous flood waters.
What is a criticism of flooding therapy?
Critical Evaluation Flooding is rarely used and if you are not careful it can be dangerous. It is not an appropriate treatment for every phobia. It should be used with caution as some people can actually increase their fear after therapy, and it is not possible to predict when this will occur. Flooding involves immersing the person with OCD in the situation they fear the most and them staying in that situation until their anxiety reduces to a more normal level, becoming less bothersome. Implosion therapy, also called flooding, seeks to help the client by directly exposing him to the source of his fear. This form of behavior therapy works with the principle that fear is time limited. Flooding is a type of habituation that exposes an animal to a stimulus at full force, where a response would be elicited, with the idea that the animal would eventually become used to the stimulus over time.
Is flooding more effective than systematic desensitisation?
With flooding, a person is exposed to the most anxiety-inducing stimulus straight away. Consequently, many people do not complete their treatment with flooding because the experience to too stressful and therefore they stop the treatment early which is why systematic desensitisation is more likely to be successful. systematic desensitization only treats the observable and measurable symptoms of a phobia. This is a significant weakness because cognitions and emotions are often the motivators of behavior and so the treatment is only dealing with symptoms not the underlying causes. Floods Spread Diseases Flooding events increase the chance of spreading waterborne diseases, such as hepatitis A and cholera. Receding floodwater can create stagnant pools of water, which provide the perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes, which can transmit malaria and other diseases. The disadvantage of systematic desensitization is that it is slow, and that it is often necessary to eventually implement some form of real-life exposure in order to fully reduce the fears.