Therapies for Psychological Disorders

1. Therapies for Psychological Disorders

2. Therapy • Therapy – A general term for any treatment process. • In psychology and psychiatry, therapy refers to a variety of psychological and biomedical techniques aimed at dealing with mental disorders or coping with problems of living.

3. Why enter therapy? • When they have a problem they’re unable to solve by themselves.

4. The components of therapy • Building a relationships between patient / client and therapist / doctor. • Identifying the problem. • Identifying the cause of the problem or the conditions that maintain the problem. • Deciding on a carrying out some form of treatment.

5. History • European - Exorcisms due to the fact that many people believed that disorders were produced my demonic possession. • Asylums of very poor quality where people were treated like animals.

6. Modern Approaches to Therapy • Psychological Therapies – Therapies based on psychological principles(rather than on the biomedical approach. • Often called psychotherapy

7. Modern Approaches to Therapy • Biomedical Therapies – Treatments that focus on altering the brain, especially with drugs, psychosurgery, or electroconvulsive therapy.

8. Insight therapies • Insight Therapies – Psychotherapies in which the therapist helps patients / clients understand (gain insight into) their problems by identifying underlying motives • Sometimes called Talk Therapies • Psychotherapies that focus on communicating and verbalizing emotions and motives to understand their problems.

9. Insight Therapies • Freudian Psychoanalysis • Psychoanalysis – The form of psychodynamic therapy developed by Sigmund Freud. • The goal of psychoanalysis is to release conflicts and memories from the unconscious. • Resistance – the blocking from consciousness of anxiety laden material. • Interpretation – The analyst’s noting supposed dream meanings, resistances, and other significant behaviors and events in order to promote insight. • Transference – The patient’s transfer to the analyst of emotions linked with other relationships (such as love or hatred for a parent).

10. Insight Therapies • Freudian Psychoanalysis • Analysis of Transference – The Freudian technique of analyzing and interpreting the patient’s relationship with the therapist, based on the assumption that this relationship mirrors unresolved conflicts in the patient’s past.

11. Insight Therapies • Psychodynamic Therapy • Therapy deriving from the psychoanalytic tradition that views individuals as responding to unconscious forces and childhood experiences, and that seeks to enhance self-insight.

12. Insight Therapies • Neo-Freudian Psychodynamic Therapies – Therapies for mental disorders that were developed by psychodynamic theorists who embraced some of Freud’s ideas but disagreed with others.

13. Insight Therapies • Humanistic Therapies – Treatment techniques based on the assumption that people have a tendency for positive growth and self-actualization, which may be blocked by an unhealthy environment that can include negative self-evaluation and criticism from others.

14. Insight Therapies • Humanistic Therapies • Client-centered therapy – A humanistic approach to treatment developed by Carl Rogers, emphasizing an individual’s tendency for healthy psychological growth through self-actualization. • Active Listening – Empathic listening in which the listener echoes, restates, and clarifies. A feature of Rogers’ client centered therapy. • Unconditional positive regard is also a key part of client centered therapy.

15. Insight Therapies • Humanistic Therapies • Reflection of feeling – Carl Roger’s technique for paraphrasing the clients’ words, attempting to capture the emotional tone expressed.

16. Behavior Therapies • Behavior Therapy – Any form of psychotherapy based on the principles of behavioral learning, especially operant conditioning and classical conditioning. • Behavior Modification – Another term for behavior therapy.

17. Behavior Therapies • Classical Conditioning Therapies • Systematic Desensitization – A behavioral technique in which anxiety is extinguished by exposing the patient to an anxiety-provoking stimulus. • Exposure Therapy – A form of desensitization in which the patient directly confronts the anxiety-provoking stimulus (as opposed to imagining the stimulus.

18. Behavior Therapies • Classical Conditioning Therapies • Aversion Therapy – As a classical conditioning procedure, aversive counter-conditioning involves presenting individuals with an attractive stimulus paired with unpleasant (aversive) stimulation in order to condition revulsion

19. Behavior Therapies • Operant Conditioning Therapies • Contingency Management – An operant conditioning approach to changing behavior by altering the consequences, especially rewards and punishments, of behavior.

20. Behavior Therapies • Operant Conditioning Therapies • Token Economy – An operant technique applied to groups, such as classrooms or mental hospital wards, involving the distribution of “tokens” or other indicators of reinforcement contingent on desired behaviors. • The tokens can later be exchanged for privileges, food, or other reinforcers.

21. Behavior Therapies • Observational-Learning Therapy • Participant Modeling – A social-learning technique in which a therapist demonstrates and encourages a client to imitate a desired behavior.

22. CognitiveTherapies • Cognitive Therapy – Emphasizes rational thinking (as opposed to subjective emotion, motivation, or repressed conflicts) as the key to treating mental disorder.

23. Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy • Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy - A newer form of psychotherapy that combines the technique of cognitive therapy with those of behavior therapy.

24. Cognitive-Behavior Therapy • Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy – Albert Ellis’s brand of cognitive therapy, based on the idea that irrational thoughts and behaviors are the cause of mental disorders.

25. Group/FamilyTherapies • Group Therapy • Any form of psychotherapy done with more than one client/patient at a time. • Group therapy s of done from a humanistic perspective.

26. Group / FamilyTherapy • Group Therapy • Self-help support groups – Groups that provide social support and an opportunity for sharing ideas about dealing with common problems. • Such groups are typically organized and run by laypersons, rather than professional therapists. • Example – Alcoholics Anonymous

27. Group / Family Therapy • Group Therapy • Couples and family therapy • Treats the family as a system. Views an individual’s unwanted behaviors as influenced by, or directed at, other family members.

28. Drug Therapy / Psychopharmacology (Biomedical) • Psychopharmacology – The prescribed use of drugs to help treat symptoms of mental illness ostensibly to ensure that individuals are more receptive to talk therapies.

29. Drug Therapy / Psychopharmacology (Biomedical) • Antipsychotic Drugs • Antipsychotic drugs – Medicines that diminish psychotic symptoms, usually by their effect on the dopamine pathways in the brain. • Tardivedyskinesia – An incurable disorder of motor control, especially involving muscles of the face and head, resulting from long-term use of antipsychotic drugs.

30. Drug Therapy / Psychopharmacology (Biomedical) • Antidepressants and Mood Stabilizers • Antidepressant Drugs – Medicines that affect depression, usually by their effect on serotonin and/or norepinephrine pathways in the brain. • Lithium Carbonate – A simple chemical compound that is highly effective in dampening the extreme mood swings of bipolar disorder. • A form of mood stabilizer

31. Drug Therapy / Psychopharmacology (Biomedical) • Antianxiety Drugs • A category of drugs that includes the barbiturates and benzodiazepines, drugs that diminish feelings of anxiety.

32. Drug Therapy / Psychopharmacology (Biomedical) • Stimulants • Drugs that normally increase activity level by encouraging communication among neurons in the brain. • However, they have been found to suppress activity level in persons with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

33. Other Medical Therapies • Psychosurgery – The general term for surgical intervention in the brain to treat psychological disorders. • Lobotomy – A now-rare psychosurgical procedure once used to calm uncontrollably emotional or violent patients. The procedure cut the nerves connecting the frontal lobes to the emotion-controlling centers of the inner brain.

34. Other Medical Therapies • Brain-Stimulation Therapies • Electroconvulsive Therapy – A treatment used primarily for depression and involving the application of an electric current to the head, producing a generalized seizure. • Sometimes called “Shock Treatment” • Repetitive Transcranialmagnetic stimulation – A treatment that involves magnetic stimulation of specific regions of the brain. Unlike ECT, TMS does not produce a seizure.

35. Hospitalization and Alternatives • Therapeutic Community – Maxwell Jones’s term for a program of treating mental disorders by making the institutional environment supportive and humane for patients.

36. Hospitalization and Alternatives • Deinstitutionalization – The policy of removing patients, whenever possible, from mental hospitals. • Community Health Movement – An effort to deinstitutionalize patients and to provide therapy from outpatient clinics. • Proponents of community mental health envisioned that recovering patients could live with their families, in foster homes, or in group homes.