Phobias - psychological interventions

Aversion therapy - this aims to use negative reinforcement to help the person stop smoking. In modern day therapy a rubber band pulled back the persons wrist when ever the feel the need to smoke. This produces pain and it becomes negatively reinforcing, this leads to the patient want to avoid the smoking stimulus as the pain has negatively reinforced it.

Aversion therapy focuses on assocaiations rather then why smoking started in the first place. If the reasons as to why the addiction are still in the environment, this type of therapy may only be successful for a short amount of time if these triggers are still present

Rapid smoking - smoker sits in a room and takes puffs on a cigarette every 6 seconds. This leads to feelings of sickness, and it is hoped that overtime the smoker will associate the feelings of sickness with smoking. Thus hopefully the smoker will develop a aversion to smoking

Contingency contracting - the individual must first identify the enviromental factors that are assocatied with their addiction. The therapist aims to grudually expose the client to differant cues and helps them delvelop coping strategies.

Self-Management techniques - The addict is encouraged by the therapist to keep a log of their addictive habits. This makes the addict aware of the the things that make them smoke/drink.

All of these therapies target environmental cues or emotions associated with addiction. However there is an issue they share, which is that they don't target why the addicts became addicted the first place.

Cognitive _ the three stages of change that psychologists have identified for stopping smoking alongside a therapist.

contemplation & commitment - is decribed as wanting to stop and being commited to do so. Action is decribed as taking nessuary steps to plan to stop smoking like buying NRT and telling family members. Maintence is maintaining a life style free of the addictive behaviour.

Psychologists have found that smokers do not need professional help to guide them through the stages above. Curry found that many smokers go though these stages by themselves apply their own stages and can still be successful,

CBT - changing thoughts in order to change behavior. This involves training the addict in social skills and developing strategies that prevent a relapse.

The presumptions are that behavior can be learned and correcting faulty thinking will help abstain the addiction. CBT programme often incorporate their spouses to help the addict to improve their social skills and problem-solving skills

Although,CBT has been found to be effective it is much more effective when used in conjuction with biological therapies such as drugs. Feeney found that alcoholics were more likey to abstain from drinking if they had CBT(38%) compared to those how just had CBT (14%).

Motivational interviewing - focuses on finding the motivation to quit their addiction. clients are encouraged to review there habits and weigh up the pros and cons that their addiction has on their lives. This will hopefully make a case for changing their habits.

Dunn et al found it was effective for helping people with drug addiction, they also found it encourages them to progress on to more intensive treatments

Burke included MI in a meta review and found that MI led to a 56% decrease in alcohol consumption.

Project MATCH found that there was no significant difference between the three types of intervention. However some work better for certain people, like people with low dependence responded to CBT than other types of clients. Therefore these findings have important implications for considering the type of client before interventions are initiated.