The Effectiveness Of CBT In The Treatment Of Phobias

The psychological studies above support the discussion on the effectiveness of CBT in the treatment of phobias and have suggested that CBT is effective as it helps to alter the patients negative thoughts or beliefs by motivating them to think about the positive statements that may assist them to handle themselves when they are exposed to phobic places or other behavioral experiments requested, thereof, this makes them tend to have strong good feelings that leads to better self-efficacy or possibilities of no longer possess its phobia. From the biological perspective, the patients may also acquire several changes such as the decreasement in volume of amygdala’s grey matter unto how a healthy amygdala supposed to be and since their amygdala which responsible for emotions or the fear are being controlled, therefore they tend to respond positively to the stimuli.

When comparing both CBT and treatment as usual, CBT is considered to be better especially on the treatment planning because the involvement of parental education outside the treatment sessions may help to catalyse the patients’ rate of improvement as they could be trained not only in the settings by the therapists but instead anytime with their parents. Moreover, few studies also showed that CBT has succeeded in achieving its goals of modifying the patient’s distorted thinking after going through homework assignments, behavioral experiments, and the evaluating or identifying the dysfunctional thinking or belief techniques, which lead them to become less likely experiencing unreasonable fears to their phobic situations as they could behave accordingly to what they think.

However, it can also be insignificant if it was being delivered individually, briefly and traditionally to SAD or agoraphobia patients as in brief CBT, there is no psychoeducation offered and the treatment was only carried for 6 sessions therefore their phobia tend to relapse because they were treated in short period of time as well as their families did not receive information on how to interact with the patients and knowledge on what the patients can do or should avoid. In comparison with VRET, VRET is far more effective because the patients get to undergo same behavioral experiment as the traditional CBT with the addition of exposure to various reality environments therefore they tend not to have big concerns if the treatment was over as they had learnt how to overcome their discomfort in various real-life environments.

Furthermore, if the CBT therapist and patient has cross-cultural issue, the outcome obtained after treatment may not be maximal, although the treatment was delivered individually, because their language barrier as well as the difference in cultural dimensions do play a major contribution during the treatment. Thus, they might have an odd collaboration because an individualists tend to be independent and have an open communication during discussions while a collectivists would feel uncomfortable to open oneself freely as individual especially to the outgroup member because they have the sense of interdependence and prefer to have indirect communication to maintain harmonious interpersonal relations (Adair & Brett 2005).