Certi 202210110547-3

Behavior Therapy
Behaviour therapies postulate that

psychological distress arises because of
faulty behaviour patterns or thought
patterns.
It is, therefore, focused on the
behaviour and thoughts of the client in the
present. The past is relevant only to the
extent of understanding the origins of the
faulty behaviour and thought patterns.
• Only the faulty patterns are corrected in the
present.
The clinical application of learning
theory principles constitute behaviour
therapy.
Behaviour therapy consists of a
large set of specific techniques and
interventions. It is not a unified theory,
which is applied irrespective of the clinical
diagnosis or the symptoms present.
• It is not a unified theory, which is applied irrespective of
the clinical diagnosis or the symptoms present.
• The symptoms of the client and the clinical
diagnosis are the guiding factors in the
selection of the specific techniques or interventions to be
applied.
Treatment of phobias or excessive and crippling fears
would require the use of one set of techniques while that of
anger outbursts would require another.
A depressed client would be treated differently from a client
who is anxious.
• The foundation of
behaviour therapy is on formulating
dysfunctional or faulty behaviours, the factors
which reinforce and maintain these behaviours,
and devising methods by which they can be
changed.
• The foundation of
behaviour therapy is on formulating
dysfunctional or faulty behaviours, the factors
which reinforce and maintain these behaviours,
and devising methods by which they can be
changed.
Method of Treatment
• The client with psychological distress or
with physical symptoms, which cannot be
attributed to physical disease, is interviewed
with a view to analyse her/his behaviour
patterns.
Behavioural analysis is conducted to find
malfunctioning behaviours, the antecedents of
faulty learning, and the factors that maintain
or continue faulty learning.
• Malfunctioning behaviours are those behaviours which
• cause distress to the client.
• Antecedent factors are those causes which predispose
the person to indulge in that behaviour.
• Maintaining factors are those factors which lead to the
persistence of the faulty behaviour.
• An example would be a young person who has
acquired the malfunctioning behaviour of smoking and
seeks help to get rid of smoking.
• Behavioural analysis conducted by interviewing the client
and the family members reveals that the person started
smoking when he was preparing for the annual examination.
He had reported relief from anxiety upon smoking. Thus,
anxiety provoking situation becomes the causative or
antecedent factor.
The feeling of relief becomes the maintaining factor for him to
continue smoking.
The client has acquired the operant response of smoking,
which is maintained by the reinforcing value of relief from
anxiety.
• Once the faulty behaviours which cause
distress, have been identified, a treatment
package is chosen.
• The aim of the treatment is to extinguish or
eliminate the faulty behaviours and substitute
them with adaptive behaviour patterns.
• The therapist does this through establishing
antecedent operations and consequent
operations.
Antecedent operations control behaviour by
changing something that precedes such a
behaviour. T
he change can be done by increasing or decreasing
the reinforcing value of a particular consequence.
This is called establishing operation. For example, if
a child gives trouble in eating dinner, an establishing
operation would be to decrease the quantity of
food served at tea time.
• This would increase the hunger at dinner and
thereby increase the reinforcing value of food at
dinner.
Praising the child when s/he eats properly tends
to encourage this behaviour. The antecedent
operation is the reduction of food at tea time
and the consequent operation is praising the
child for eating dinner. It establishes the
response of eating dinner.
Behavioural Techniques
• A range of techniques is available for changing
behaviour.
• The principles of these techniques are to
reduce the arousal level of the client, alter
behaviour through classical conditioning or
operant conditioning with different
contingencies of reinforcements, as well as to
use vicarious learning procedures, if
necessary.
• negative reinforcement.
• Aversive conditioning
• Positive reinforcement
• token economy.
• Unwanted behaviour can be reduced
• and wanted behaviour can be increased
• simultaneously through differential
• reinforcement.
• Systematic desensitisation
• Modelling (Vicarious learning, i.e. learning by
observing others process of rewarding small
changes in the behaviour, the client gradually
learns to acquire the behaviour of the model.)
• Time - Out
• There is a great variety of techniques in
behaviour therapy.
• The skill of the therapist lies in conducting an
accurate behavioural analysis and building a
treatment package with the appropriate
techniques.
Relaxation Procedures
• Anxiety is a manifestation of the psychological distress
for which the client seeks treatment.
The behavioural therapist views anxiety as increasing the
arousal level of the client, thereby
acting as an antecedent factor in causing the faulty
behaviour. The client may smoke to
decrease anxiety, may indulge in other activities such as
eating, or be unable to concentrate
for long hours on her/his study because of the anxiety.
Therefore, reduction of anxiety would
decrease the unwanted behaviours of excessive eating or
smoking.
• Relaxation procedures are used to decrease the anxiety
levels. For instance, progressive muscular relaxation
and meditation induce a state of relaxation. In
progressive muscular relaxation, the client is taught to
contract individual muscle groups in order to give the
awareness of tenseness or muscular tension.
• After the client has learnt to tense the muscle group
such as the forearm, the client is asked to let go the
tension. The client is told that the tension is what the
client has at present and that s/he has to get into the
opposite state. With repeated practice the client learns
to relax all the muscles of the body.
Relaxation
• The principle of reciprocal inhibition operates
here.
• This principle states that the presence of two
mutually opposing forces at the same time,
inhibits the weaker force. Thus, the relaxation
response is first built up and mildly anxiety-
provoking scene is imagined, and the anxiety is
overcome by the relaxation.
• The client is able to tolerate progressively greater
levels of anxiety because of her/his relaxed state.

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Behavior Therapy

Behaviour therapies postulate that

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