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Multiple Phobias and Grief: A Case Study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 June 2009

Stephen Tilley
Stephen Tilley
Affiliation:
Nurse Therapist, Crichton Royal Hospital, Dumfries
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Extract

This is a report of a 29-year-old man who presented with (1) multiple phobias, including fears of eating with others, blood and injury, and fainting in crowds; (2) ejaculatory incompetence; and (3) grief unresolved five years after his first wife's death, causing distress and avoidance of grief cues. As he declined an offer of behavioural treatment for the grief, the intention of the case design was to measure changes in grief-related distress and avoidance, but not treat it. However, exposure in vivo for the largely non-grief-related phobias involved inadvertent exposure to cues for grief and the man initiated some self-directed exposure to cues for grief. Measures indicated reduction in both phobic and some grief-related symptomatology. Mechanisms possibly accounting for these changes, and difficulties encountered in trying to treat this phobia while leaving grief untreated, are discussed. It is suggested that under certain circumstances, grief pathology may reduce during behavioural treatment for related phobic problems.

Type
Research Article
Information
Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , January 1985 , pp. 59 - 68
Copyright
Copyright © British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies 1985

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