Behavioural Therapy

Theory

Behaviour therapy focuses on what you do. This type of therapy works particularly well for problems in which certain maladaptive anxiety-causing behaviors recur such as phobias, anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders, drug and alcohol problems, and eating disorders.

Treatment Approach

Behaviour therapy focuses on changing maladaptive things that patients do. This is in part accomplished by reinforcing positive behaviors and extinguishing negative ones. Some common types of behavior therapy are:

• Systematic Desensitization- By approaching the situation associated with a great deal of anxiety (such as being at a great height) in steps, the patient can gradually decrease the anxiety related to it. This process usually contained three steps:

1. Relaxation Techniques- Often the patient is instructed to breathe deeply and relax muscle groups one at a time. Other times the patient is told to use mental imagery by imagining themselves in a safe place. Sometimes, this step is used alone to simply decrease anxiety. One type of relaxation therapy is biofeedback which involves using machines to monitor physiological signs of relaxation such as heart rate and muscle tenseness.
2. Creating a Hierarchy- The therapist creates a series of situations in which the feared event occurs more and more intensely.
3. Desensitization- The patient uses the relaxation techniques to progress further and further along the hierarchy with the therapist until he or she can handle to most anxiety-causing event in the series. The progression could be imagined, (e.g., thinking about a dog barking at you) real, (e.g., having a dog bark at you), or even virtual (e.g., have an animated virtual dog on the computer bark at you.)

• Exposure Therapy- Uses the same method as systematic desensitization except without the relaxation techniques.
• Flooding- Instead of going through a hierarchy that works from less traumatic to most traumatic anxiety provoking events, the patient is exposed to the most anxiety-causing event at once. With this technique the patient confronts the feared situation directly.
• Behaviour Modification- All behaviour therapy attempts to modify behaviour but there is also a specific process called behaviour modification. This can be used to either increase or decrease a behaviour. In this technique, one begins by defining and counting the occurrences of an undesirable behaviour the patient would like to decrease, such as biting one 's nails, or a desired behaviour the client would like to increase, such as assertive behaviour. This is called collecting baseline data. The baseline data is used to compare increases or decreases in behaviour which monitors success of the therapy. For those wanting to decrease a behaviour, circumstances that may trigger the undesirable behaviour are identified. The person then rearranges his or her environment so that possible triggers of the behaviour can be avoided, which, in turn, will hopefully decrease the behaviour. For those wanting to increase a behaviour, they may identify situations that would be appropriate for the behaviour and intentionally put themselves in these circumstances to perform the desirable behaviour. Behaviour modification may also involve a series of reinforcements and punishments to help increase and decrease specific behaviors (aka operant conditioning).

Some theorists combine behavioural techniques with cognitive therapy techniques, such as thought restructuring. The two theories work well together especially when treating depression and anxiety disorders.