Talk:Flooding (psychology)

Untitled
Flooding has more uses then simply helping persons deal with their PTSD. Flooding can be utilized in the removal of phobias. This article really needs a better write-up.

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Criticism
Cesar Millan:
 * Dr. Andrew Luescher, Veterinary Behaviorist for the Animal Behavior Clinic at Purdue University says “Millan's techniques are almost exclusively based on two techniques: flooding and positive punishment. In flooding, an animal is exposed to a fear (or aggression) evoking stimulus and prevented from leaving the situation, until it stops reacting. To take a human example: arachnophobia would be treated by locking a person into a closet, releasing hundreds of spiders into that closet, and keeping the door shut until the person stops reacting. The person might be cured by that, but also might be severely disturbed and would have gone through an excessive amount of stress. Flooding has therefore always been considered a risky and cruel method of treatment.”

Aren't there opinions against flooding humans or is it only bad for animals? --Error 13:14, 2 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Of course Wikipedia needs proper sources, but I can only say some words of my personal experience. I've lived for six months in a psychoptherapeutical clinic and there had a very good and trust-based relationship with many other patients. In literally each and every case where flooding was used, the patients stated they felt like RAPED but LIED to the therapists in order to NEVER endure such a procedure again! Thus, the therapists widely believed that the therapy was successful (as the patients throughout stated they now were able to do all the things they before were not), while in fact the patient's were just traumatized even more, and only searched for ways to get out of the clinic safely (ie without further flooding therapy and the like) as soon as possible, of course counter-balanced by grave despair from the perception that now nobody might ever be able to help them anymore (depression through fatalistic non-knowledge of alternatives). --91.14.226.147 (talk) 02:46, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Merge from exposure therapy
Is there any difference? They sound pretty similar. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules: simple/complex 14:17, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
 * This decision should not be based on casual impressions. In fact, flooding is a subset - a type of - exposure therapy. Flooding should be discussed in the exposure therapy article. Tom Cloyd (talk) 01:34, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Exactly. Flooding is a subtype of exposure therapy. Most exposure therapies treat anxiety disorders by presenting with a fear- or anxiety-inducing stimulus (e.g., a snake or panic-inducing situation) so the patient will experience "extinction" of the feared stimulus. That is, when the patient sees a snake for a long enough period, the body is unable to maintain its fear reaction and eventually relaxes. Eventually, a patient may see a snake without having a fear reaction. Two different approaches are "exposure therapy" (aka. exposure therapy or in vivo exposure), which creates a hierarchy of feared stimuli and begins with the least aversive stimulus, and "flooding," which begins with the most aversive. For example, someone might create a hierarchy from the least (e.g., seeing a snake behind glass at a zoo) to the most aversive (e.g., having a snake wrapped around his or her neck). Exposure therapy would be to start with the snake behind the glass whereas flooding would start with placing the snake around the patient's neck. Obviously, flooding is highly unpleasant for the patient although it can be effective. There is some inconsistency whether relaxation techniques decrease the long-term effectiveness of exposure therapies. At least in some research, it seems to decrease the effectiveness of exposure therapy for panic disorder, although it appears to assist in the treatment for specific phobias. Exposure therapies have been shown effective for a large variety of anxiety disorders, including PTSD, OCD, specific phobies, social phobia, and Panic Disorder.

For more information about flooding, search for Joseph Wolpe, and for more information about exposure-based therapies, see David Barlow. His chapter in "Treatments that Work" is an excellent reference.

JoshuaEyer (talk) 16:22, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[I'm a doctoral student in Clinical Psychology.]

Confusing text.
This article doesn't seem very clear at present; for example I'm not sure what to make of sentences like this one:
 * This is a faster yet less efficient and more traumatic method of ridding fears such as of systematic desensitization.

I'd fix that myself but I'm having trouble parsing it; unless it turns out that there are people afraid of systematic desensitization, which seems like a rather abstract thing to be afraid of. --Kevin Saff (talk) 03:45, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I want to second this very old comment. What does "efficient" even mean in this context? It is mentioned twice that the experience is likely to be "traumatic" for the patients but the goal is to treat the effects of trauma. What the heck? This article reads as if it chaotically mixed psychological jargon with the everyday interpretation of the same words. --Mudd1 (talk) 13:14, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Similarities and Differences Between Flooding and Exposure Therapy
While exposure therapy and flooding are similar, there are some key differences, particularly in terms of the long-term effectiveness. In addition to causing greater distress to the patient, flooding does not demonstrate as much lasting effectiveness as exposure that proceeds through a fear hierarchy from least aversive to most aversive. Thus, many psychologists agree that exposure therapy should be considered a higher standard of care than flooding. I believe it is important to keep the two as separate subjects because individuals considering seeking anxiety treatment are more likely to avoid exposure-based strategies if they believe that they will be asked to engage in flooding. Corneli4350 (talk) 18:47, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Neutrality
This article reads like it advocates Flooding as a technique rather than simply describing what it is. I have nominated it to be checked for neutrality according to Wikipedia standards.nycdi (talk) 03:11, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

New Criticisms
Is relaxation techniques apart of flooding or systematic desensitization? From what I have read it is not. Ssierra6 (talk) 16:48, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

"Flooding (psychology" listed at Redirects for discussion
The redirect [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Flooding_(psychology&redirect=no Flooding (psychology] has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at  until a consensus is reached. Utopes (talk / cont) 20:25, 3 February 2024 (UTC)