The Effectiveness of Emotive Imagery in the Treatment of Darkness Phobia in Children

Abstract

This study examined the effectiveness of emotive imagery as a treatment for clinically significant darkness phobia in 7- to 10-year-old children. Twenty-four clinically diagnosed children were randomly assigned to either emotive imagery treatment or a waiting-list control condition. Emotive imagery was conducted over six sessions, one per week. The results demonstrated that the emotive imagery group showed significantly greater reductions in darkness fears and anxiety according to child and parent reports and a behavioural darkness probe task, in comparison to the waiting-list group. The waiting-list children showed minimal reductions in fearfulness over the 20-week waiting-list period. The improvements of the emotive imagery group were maintained at the 3-month follow-up.