Controlled study of self-exposure treatment for phobics: preliminary communication.

Patients with phobic disorder (mainly agoraphobics ) of minimum one year duration were treated by self-administered exposure in vivo treatment. Seventy-one patients were randomly assigned to one of three groups: (A) book-instructed, (B) computer-instructed, or (C) therapist-instructed. All three groups improved significantly to a similar extent on various phobic measures at the end of the treatment and maintained their treatment gains at 6-month follow up. Mean clinicians' time spent with each patient was 40 minutes, 4.2 hours and 3.2 hours in group A, B and C respectively. Similar small numbers of patients defaulted from each group.