Phobia Research Papers

Phobic Disorders are among the most typical of a large population. Many Americans today suffer from a specific phobia and most undergo a treatment. The most common phobia today would be anachrophobia, or the fear of spiders. There are many ways to treat a phobia. The psychologists and psychiatrists in the United States all use many different approaches to treating a phobia; but there are two main treatments that they would use. They both have high success rates and both are still a very modern way to treat many of today's patients. The primary treatments in the United States to treat phobias would be behavioral approach and a cognitive approach. American culture are always obsessed on how one thinks. Cognitive therapy is a perfect example on how the United States likes to treat phobias. Cognitive therapy looks at an individual's thoughts, and uses that to treat the patient. Cognitive behavioral therapy can make treatments more successful when combined.
Psychologist can help patients by evaluating their thoughts and take step by step to slowly stop any anxieties and that come along with the phobias. The success rate of this type of therapy is very high for many problems. As Dr. Seth J. Gillihan said, “Thanks to the development of these treatment programs, countless women, men, and children have been able to reclaim their lives” (2015). Behavioral approach to phobic treatments is one of the most popular and successful treatments out there. Many have used its techniques to fix problems at a comfortable rate that the patient wants to be treated. With many forms of treatments such as flooding, system desensitization, and exposure therapy; behavioral therapy is no stranger to success to Americans. Flooding is forcing the patient to be face to face with the phobia itself. In a case with arachnophobia, a patient might be locked in a room by him or herself if a tarantula. This way they would be forced to be comfortable and wait out the anxiety that is being caused by the phobia to rid of the fear. Thus making the patient cured of their arachnophobia. But this method in particular is “rarely used and if you are not careful it can be dangerous” (McLeod 2010). Another form of therapy in a behavioral approach would be systematic desensitization.
Systematic desensitization can be described as substituting a fear with a more calming and relaxing response.
First, the patient must practice a calm response. Then slowly, when when the patient is shown their phobia, they must practice the relaxing methods to replace the fear. This is one of the more successful and most prominent in American culture to treat phobias. Wolpe had reported a 90% success rate for the systematic desensitization method (1960). The last techniques or a phobia would be exposure therapy. Exposure therapy can be successful in well over 90% of cases. Exposure therapy is a system of step to gradually expose the phobia to a patient. In the first day of treatment, a psychologist might just talk to a patient about their fear. Then the next day, a picture of the phobia may be shown and discussed with the patient; and so on and so forth until the patient can finally confront their fear in person. All these techniques stem from a behavioral approach to treating phobias in
America. In conclusion, cognitive therapy in the United States is very common and highly successful. Behavioral therapy is also common with high ratings and is easily one therapy that Americans can point out because of how popular it is. Typically, when these two treatments are put together, almost anyone can be treated with certainty of a positive reaction afterwards. Both cognitive and behavioral therapies are the first treatments that come to mind in the United States.