User:Lizzymckenzie/Specific phobia

Treatment

Therapy is a common type of treatment used frequently by people who are experiencing problems with their mental health to better understand their illness.

Psychotherapy engages a patient in a variety of conversations to better understand how that patient can change their current behavior or thoughts to better their life and mental state. This specific form of therapy focuses on talking through problem-solving situations so that the patient can potentially resolve these scenarios when they occur.

Cognitive therapy is a relatively new field, becoming known in the 1960s. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a faster-paced type of therapy. Patients attend a session a week for less than an hour and, on average, less than a year. Much of the focus in CBT is based around changing the patient's current way of thinking. When it comes to specific phobias, CBT is used to focus on changing current behaviors and thought processes that a patient has into a new way of thinking, or acting, to help make their life as productive as possible.

Exposure therapy involves a patient actively engaging in different scenarios where one is facing their phobia through images, discussions, or seeing it face-to-face. This allows patients to potentially slowly get rid of their phobia, or decrease the amount of fear one experiences when dealing with their phobia. Exposure therapy and CBT are the two most common types of therapy used to treat patients with specific phobia.

Cognitive drill theory (CDT) is another type of therapy that focuses on exposure to certain words (usually relating explicitly to ones fear) repeatedly to help a patient try to better manage their fear. It is most commonly used to treat those with OCD and specific phobias.