There are a number of effective behavioral techniques that are used by therapists for phobia treatment. Cognitive techniques and medications are also deemed to be useful for treatments. Before discussing these treatments, it is important to note that there exists a relationship between obsessive-compulsive disorder and phobias. OCD is an anxiety disorder wherein people afflicted with it are burdened with uncontrollable thoughts, and distressing compulsions. A phobia is the irrational fear over almost anything. For example, germ phobic people have obsessive thoughts about the possibility of contacting microbes, and they always feel the need to wash themselves over and over.

The most commonly used phobia treatment is the behavioral treatment. The main focus of this type of treatment is to expose people to their fears in hopes that it will extinguish their anxiety, and ultimately, OCD. There are three basic components for this treatment, namely systematic desensitization, modeling and flooding. Systematic desensitization involves the client making a list of the situations or objects they fear, ranked from the most to least feared. During this method, the therapist teaches relaxation techniques, and then proceeds to exposing the client from least feared to the most feared. Results are gradual for this method, and will end only when the client can face his or her fears without overwhelming anxiety, and the distressing compulsions are gone.

Modeling, another component of phobia treatment, is normally used together with systematic desensitization. In this case, the therapist must perform or model the right behavior first before asking the client to do the same. Read the rest of this entry »