APPLICATIONS OF BEHAVIOUR MODIFICATION AND MENTAL HEALTH

All human behavior falls within the domain of the behavior therapist, and practitioners of behavioral treatment are to be found among  educators and  special educators, psychologists, social workers,medical professionals,and paraprofessionals in every area of human service.The frequent criticism that applied behaviorism ignores subjective  (i.e., mental) events has been blunted in recent years by an increasing interest in the manipulation and treatment of “covert processes’’  (Cautela, 1973). Thoughts, sensations,and other private experiences  now appear to be as open to functional analysis and modification as  overt behavioral events. A serious problem is that of measurement       reliability insofar as private events are directly observable only by the person within whose body they occur.

Nonetheless, behavior therapists have found that systematic  arrangement of covert events (for example, practiced imaginary  sequences) can alter the frequency of both covert and overt behaviors, and that overt events may havereliable  effects on covert behaviors (Kazdin, 1977).