Berlin: According to new research, exposure therapy can be used to control one phobia in an affected person, and it may also eliminate another phobia.
According to a study published in the Journal of Translational Psychiatry, individuals who develop a phobia of certain objects or specific situations may gain control over other phobias if they confront their fears.
Iris Kodzaga, a leading researcher in the field of procedural and clinical neurosciences at the University of Roehampton in Germany, stated that it is common for people who have one phobia to develop more than one phobia over time.
However, she explained that treating all of them by targeting one specific phobia through exposure therapy can be effective. Researchers included 50 individuals in the study who had a fear of spiders along with a fear of heights. Exposure therapy was used only to target the fear of spiders.
The results revealed that individuals who underwent exposure therapy to overcome the fear of spiders experienced an average reduction of 15 percent in their fear of heights.
Exposure therapy has proven to be the most effective treatment for various phobias. In this therapeutic approach, the individual, under the therapist's guidance, learns to confront situations that trigger fear and gains control over their fears.