Case study Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 4

Case study - Research Paper Example The attending physician decided to put her to sleep by administering sedative. Not wanting to give sedative for fears of developing addiction, the doctor advised Angel’s parents to consult a psychologist. During the talk with the psychologist, the couple narrated that their daughter only manifested this reaction once, a day after they came back from the hospital because Angel was confined when she sprained her left ankle due to a biking accident. The couple also reported that their daughter had previous episodes of being tachypnic upon the sight of injection and fainting shortly afterwards, even after the administration of shot. The couple thought these were because of Angel’s diabetes, and did not pay any attention to them. Because of Angel’s young age, the pain might be the major contributing and the primary factor for her trypanophobia (Deacon and Abramowitz, 2006). However, the fear of fainting might have exacerbated the condition, and may have made the fear of needles more life-threatening (Du et al., 2008). Because of this, it is the fear of pain that should be important to be addressed first. Angel might have been classically conditioned of experiencing pain with her every injection. The classical conditioning theory suggests that the fear of needles is actually a protective response against pain. In this scenario, the elicited response is fear. The unconditioned stimulus causing fear is when Angel feels pain, and the conditioned stimulus is the sight of syringes. Thus, after classical conditioning, Angel already associates pain with the syringes, and thus fears seeing syringes already (Scott, 2009). To reverse the fear brought about by classical conditioning, a classical extinction should be performed. In this method, the unconditioned stimulus, which is pain, should be unlinked to the sight of the syringes. This can be performed by vicarious learning approach, in which Angel will learn not to fear the syringe by looking at