Aversion Therapy - Learning Approach Unit 2

In the Unit 2 exam you may be asked to describe or evaluate aversion therapy in whether it is a good treatment method or not for addictive behaviours.

Aversion therapy uses classical conditioning to remove abnormal or undesirable behaviours through classical conditioning.

It does this by making people associate undesirable behaviours with something unpleasant.

Aversion Therapy is often used with alcoholics and drug addicts. Where an addict is given an injection of emetic (vomit inducting drugs) so that addicts will vomit when they drink for example alcohol so that they associate drinking alcohol with vomiting.

Evidence for aversion therapy comes from the Howard study where 82 alcoholics were given a 10 day aversion therapy treatment program. Most patients felt that they could now resist alcohol even in a high risk situation, however those who had a longer alcohol addiction history had a lessened affect of being able to resist alcohol (when using as evidence could suggest another treatment alongside to erase any other issues that may be causing the addiction such as depression).