BTSC Staff Nurse 1 August-2025
Mental Health Nursing
Easy
What is the indication for aversion therapy?
Appeared in: BTSC Staff Nurse 1 August-2025
Explanation
- Aversion therapy is a behavioral treatment based on classical conditioning, primarily used for addictive disorders.
- The core principle is to associate the undesirable behavior (e.g., drinking alcohol) with an unpleasant or aversive stimulus (e.g., nausea and vomiting induced by a drug like disulfiram).
- This repeated pairing causes the patient to develop a conditioned aversion to the substance, thereby reducing the impulse to use it.
- Among the given options, alcohol abuse is the most classic and well-documented indication for this type of therapy.
Why Other Options Were Wrong
- Option A: Schizophrenia is a severe thought disorder characterized by psychosis. Its primary treatment involves antipsychotic medications to manage symptoms like hallucinations and delusions, along with psychotherapy and social support.
- Option B: While phobias are treated with behavioral therapy, the standard of care is systematic desensitization or exposure therapy, which involves gradual, controlled exposure to the feared object to reduce anxiety, not create an aversion.
- Option D: Obsessions are a core feature of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). The gold-standard treatment is a specific type of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) called Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), often combined with SSRI medications.
Related Visual
Clinical Relevance
- Nursing practice connection: Knowing Indications for Aversion Therapy helps nurses interpret findings accurately and avoid errors in routine assessment, medication administration, and patient teaching.
- A nurse's primary role in aversion therapy (e.g., with disulfiram) is patient education. The nurse must teach the patient to avoid all forms of alcohol, including hidden sources like mouthwash, certain cough syrups, and even some foods, to prevent a severe reaction.
- Monitoring for and managing the adverse effects of the aversive stimulus is a critical patient-safety responsibility.
- What if? If a patient with alcohol abuse also has severe liver disease, aversion therapy with disulfiram would be contraindicated. The treatment plan would need to shift to other psychosocial interventions and medications that are not hepatotoxic, such as naltrexone or acamprosate.
How to Approach the Question
- First, identify the core concept in the question, which is 'aversion therapy'.
- Recall the definition and primary purpose of this therapy: to create a negative association with an undesirable behavior.
- Evaluate each option to see which condition fits this treatment model.
- Schizophrenia is a psychotic disorder, treated with antipsychotics.
- Phobias and obsessions are treated with specific types of CBT (exposure therapy, ERP), not by creating aversion.
- Alcohol abuse is a classic example of an addictive behavior treated by creating an aversion. This makes it the most likely correct answer.
Concept Tested & Keywords
- Concept Tested: Indications for Aversion Therapy
- Stem keywords: indication, aversion therapy
- Lead-in keywords: What is
- Negative lead-in flag: false
Question ID
Q8GzfVVbQeNZhz4RyLEH5h
Reference Book
E6 Kaplan Sadock's Synopsis of Psychiatry-2022 (pp 1-3768 of 3768) p. 2430-2432
E6 Robert Boland, Marcia L. Verduin - Kaplan and Sadock's Comprehensive Text of Psychiatry-Wolters Kluwer Health (2024) (pp 1-16525 of 16525) p. 9190-9192
Practise the full BTSC Staff Nurse 1 August-2025
Attempt every question from this paper in a timed mock, then review the full solution for each one.
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