A nurse working in a mental health clinic knows that cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) may be used to treat anxiety disorders, including phobias, with which of the following approaches?

Explanation

• Cognitive behavioral therapy focuses on first identifying, and then working to change, maladaptive thoughts and behaviors causing distress and poor functioning.

• When an anxiety disorder involves a phobia, CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) may include exposure therapy. This approach exposes the patient gradually and increasingly to the object or situation of the phobia (i.e. spiders for arachnophobia), along with psychotherapy to process the thoughts and feelings that arise with exposure. This is done until the patient can tolerate the object or situation and it no longer interferes with his or her life.

• Risperidone (Risperdal) is not typically used to treat an anxiety disorder or phobia. It is used in the treatment of schizophrenia and other disorders with delusions and hallucinations.

• Patients with anxiety disorders and phobias will rarely require inpatient treatment for a phobia unless there are other mental health disorders present.

• Electroshock therapy is used in the treatment of severe, refractory (hard to treat) major depression, not for anxiety disorders. 

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