Therapy for Curing Claustrophobia - Essay Example

Biomedical therapy may be done in the form of psychosurgery, electroconvulsive therapy and drug therapy. On the other hand, psychotherapy is divided to humanistic therapy, psychodynamic therapy, group therapy, cognitive therapy and behavioral therapy (Feldman et al., 2001, p. 481). The short write-up will deal with a specific psychological disorder while looking for a psychotherapy that best cures it.

Various forms of fear disorder has been recorded and studied in the field of psychology and psychiatry. In particular, the study focuses on claustrophobia as that fear will be analyzed and the best and least effective psychotherapy would be discussed. Claustrophobia is the fear of closed spaces as its etymology may show. It comes from two Latin words: claustrum which means enclosed places and phobia which means fear. It is known to be a form of anxiety that may vary in severity depending on the patient condition.

Patients with claustrophobia may feel very scared inside tiny rooms, crowded space, MRI chambers, roller coasters and even tight clothing (Barlow and Durand, 2012, p. 300). Claustrophobics have difficulty receiving the medical tests like MRI as they do not like getting stuck inside an enclosed space. Various factors had been attributed to the existence of claustrophobia like traditional conditioning, hereditary and amygdala reduction (Coan and Allen, 2007, p. 452). Claustrophobics may panic inside windowless rooms and the anxiety may progress to sweating, jerking and palpitating.

They may even cry irrationally and tend to go out of their fearful situation as much as possible while having a hard time to breathe (Barlow and Durand, 2012, p. 300). The best treatment for claustrophobia is the combination of cognitive therapy and behavioral therapy which is known as cognitive-behavioral therapy or CBT. It is the combination of two psychotherapies wherein the sessions are designed to assist the patients in learning the proper alteration of their behavior. They tend to identify the negative thoughts that trigger the phobia and replace them with pleasant and logical ones (Dobson, 2010, p. 61). In that way, patients will see to it that their conditions will improve by studying their behavioral patterns and habits and slowly unlearn them.

Afterwards, they try to create new habits by inducing positive thoughts. In contrast with the CBT, group therapy may be considered to be the least effective psychotherapy since claustrophobics are afraid of enclosed spaces or even crowded places (Barlow and Durand, 2012, p. 144). They may also get distracted once there are other people together with them in the treatment sessions. They will not be able to focus on their own behaviors alone when group therapy is administered. Claustrophobia is just like other anxiety disorders especially the ones with fear and it can be cured without relying much on medications.

Through an educational set-up like psychotherapies, the patients may learn how to control their thoughts and fight the fear-inducing thoughts. Later on, they may totally overcome the panic attacks and they can save themselves from claustrophobia. Answer to Additional Question:Humanistic therapy would not be as effective as CBT because the former deals with the needs and direction in life of the patient. Claustrophobia requires correction in behavior and way of thinking which humanistic therapy might not directly address.

With that kind of therapy, people are not assumed to be sick to get the treatment (Totton, 2010). People are considered to experience distress at some points of their lives that require humanistic therapy. They may need to identify their needs and find the underlying causes and solve them. Solving it leads to comfort and improvement in the psyche of the patient.