Hostname: page-component-7b7567c8c-kwt9d Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-14T08:08:37.815Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

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
Get accessRights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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.

Information

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

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Alberti, R. and Emmons, M. (1978). Your Perfect Right. San Luis Obispo: Impact Publishers.Google Scholar
Marks, I. (1981a). Cure and Care of Neuroses. New York: John Wiley.Google Scholar
Marks, I. (1981b). Living with Fear. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Marks, I. M., Hallam, R. S., Connolly, J. and Philpott, R. (1977). Nursing in Behavioural Psychotherapy. London: Research Services of Royal College of Nursing.Google Scholar
Marks, I. M. and Mathews, A. M. (1979). Brief standard self rating for phobic patients. Behaviour Research and Therapy 17, 263–267.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mawson, D., Marks, I. M., Ramm, L. and Stern, R. S. (1981). Guided mourning for morbid grief: a controlled study, British Journal of Psychiatry 138, 185–193.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pedder, J. R. (1982). Failure to mourn, and melancholia. British Journal of Psychiatry, 141, 329–337.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ramsay, R. W. (1979), Bereavement: the behavioural treatment of pathological grief. In Trends in Behaviour Therapy. New York: Academic Press, pp. 217–248.Google Scholar
Snaith, R. P., Ahmed, S. M., Mehta, S. and Hamilton, M. (1971). Assessment of the severity of primary depressive illness, Psychological Medicine 1, 143–149.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Watson, J. P. and Marks, I. M. (1971), Relevant and irrelevant fear in flooding: a crossover study of phobic patients. Behaviour Therapy 2, 275–296.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.