Treating Specific Phobia in Psychosis
摘要
This chapter describes how to treat specific phobia in the context of psychosis, with the goal of showing patients that pathological fear can be reduced and that this learning can generalize to other irrational fears. It outlines key assessment procedures, including the use of a DSM-aligned Severity Measure for Specific Phobia to quantify frequency, avoidance, and impairment. The core of the intervention is exposure therapy, complemented by cognitive therapy techniques that target distorted threat appraisals. A case vignette of a patient with schizophrenia demonstrates how graded work with a circumscribed phobia can build confidence, model fear habituation, and indirectly support later work on paranoid and psychotic fears.