Essay Sample on Jack's Unreasonable Fear of Snakes: A DSM 5 Analysis

Introduction

My client's name is Jack, a middle-aged high school teacher in New Orleans. Jack has a specific phobia of snakes. A specific phobia refers to an extreme and unreasonable fright of a specified situation or object. It is evident he is experiencing the phobia according to the immediate anxiety response criteria analyzed in the DSM 5, as he encounters panic or anxiety when a snake is presented to him (Hirth, 2019). Even the thought of a snake scares the hell out of him. DSM 5 acts as a guide by issuing particular criteria of diagnosing a specific phobia from the Association of Psychiatric located in America.

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Reciprocal Inhibition

Reciprocal inhibition is a phenomenon initially recognized through the psychology field whereby reflexes activation in the body prompts one muscle group and simultaneously inhibits an opposite or antagonistic set of muscles. The exercise is essential because it allows ease of motion and protects one from injury (Brown, 2017). However, if unexpected motor neurons develop, starting concurrent contraction of unmatched muscles, a tear might come about.

I would facilitate reciprocal inhibition to my client by activating the anterior tibialis muscle through exerting resistance with my hand to the foot top and telling the client to pull his toe to his head. After he actively returns his leg against light-normal resistance, I will ask him to relax and enable the foot to retaliate to the center position and then repeat while telling the client to pull back and relax for more than ten times energetically. Lastly, after the problem seems to be ceasing, I will employ the passive straightening of the gastric with a 20-50 sec clasp.

Fear rating expressed as a percentage The development of the fear hierarchy underwent three stages. Firstly, the initial stage involved teaching the patient about deep muscle relaxation skills and breathing activities. The step is crucial because of reciprocal inhibition, where the patient's response is impeded because it doesn't match with the other. Secondly, the client developed a fear hierarchy beginning at the reaction that creates minimal fear and building up in steps to the most horrifying fear pictures. The list issues a structure that is important for therapy (Kurtz, 2019). The last stage is when the client struggled to overcome the fear hierarchy, beginning with the minimal unpleasant response and exercising relaxation techniques as they advanced. The patient passes this step when he defeats the fear presented to them. The patient repeated the process until the scenario failed to evoke any terror, showing that the exercise was successful.

Systematic Desensitization

Wolpe developed this treatment method in the 1950s. I prefer this treatment to Jack since it’s suitable to counter his phobia for snakes. He will be exposed gradually to the stimulus that produces the anxiety with the ultimate aim of having control over it. I will teach Jack to be in control of his breathing as the first stage, which results in reciprocal inhibition (Marx, 2018). The patient then creates a fear hierarchy starting with that stimulus, which brings the least fear to that which has the highest fear. This stage is essential because it forms the basis for the therapy. In the third stage, Jack will start working up the fear hierarchy he created in the second stage (Brown, 2017). I will ensure that he only moves up to the next stimulus after he has complete control over the stimulus he is dealing with.

The Best Way for My Client to Be Phobia Free

The patient will require several sessions to ensure that he has complete control over the phobia. This therapy begets success upon attainment of the objectives. Exposure may either be done in-vivo, where it is imagined or in-vitro, where the patient encounters the fear in real life (Hirth, 2019). Many scholars opine that in-vivo therapy works best. One weakness within in-vitro exposure is that some patients cannot imagine vivid descriptions of the said fears.

As a treatment method, systemic desensitization is limited to specific learned phobias as it cannot be used for severe mental illnesses like depression and schizophrenia. Relaxations and hierarchies are not necessary for therapy. The only effective way is exposure to the feared object or situation (Yang, 2017). It is purely based on the idea that abnormal behavior is learned, thus makes it difficult to treat the phobias as it only targets the symptoms of the phobia instead of the causes. This method has little to no effect on treating social phobias and agoraphobia. It posits the question of whether there could be other causes for phobias other than classical conditioning. Poor social skills can be addressed by learning practical social skills, among different ways, then systemic desensitization alone.

Conclusion

Methods of treatment vary from one disorder to another. Historical data proves that improved neurotic condition with behavioral therapy has the best results. Those who suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder can be best treated with aversion therapy, which focuses on their well-detailed narratives, and the patients cooperate fully to obtain the best results. Whichever method of treatment adopted, reciprocal inhibition, counterconditioning, or aversion, a reduction in phobic fears is best shown where the patient was exposed minimally to the stimulus and paired with minimal muscle relaxation. It ultimately results in less anxiety experienced in the phobic situation.

References

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Lowmaster, S. E., Hartman, M. J., Zimmermann, J., Baldock, Z. C. & Kurtz, J. E. (2019, October 18). Further validation of the Response Inconsistency Scale for the Personality Inventory for DSM-5. Journal of Personality Assessment. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00223891.2019.1674320?journalCode=hjpa20

Martin, J. J., Strausfeld, N. J., & Hirth, F. (2019). A Lineage-Related Reciprocal Inhibition Circuitry for Sensory-Motor Action Selection.

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Yavuz, U. S., Negro, F., Diedrichs, R., & Farina, D. (2018, Jan 31). Reciprocal inhibition between motor neurons of the tibialis anterior and triceps surae in humans. Journal of Neurophysiology. https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/jn.00424.2017

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