Chapter 14 flashcards

Trephination

An early therapy for mental disorders that involved cutting a hole in the skull.

Subsyndromal disorders

Versions of psychological disorders that don’t meet the DSM-5 criteria for diagnosis but that may nonetheless cause significant problems.

Rapport

A client’s sense of trust in, respect for, and comfort with the treatment provider.

Cultural competence

An understanding of how clients’ cultural backgrounds shape their beliefs, values, and expectations for therapy.

Hysteria

An older term for a group of presumably psychogenic disorders that included a wide variety of physical and psychological symptoms; the term used today is conversion disorder.

Psychogenic

Resulting from a psychological cause rather than from organic damage to the nervous system.

Free association

To say anything that enters the mind, no matter how trivial, embarrassing, or disagreeable.

Resistance

A patient’s self-censorship or avoidance of certain topics.

Psychoanalysis

A method of therapy, developed by Freud, asserting that clinical symptoms arise from unconscious conflicts rooted in childhood.

Interpretations

In psychoanalysis, explanations of how various thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are linked to prior experiences.

Transference

The tendency to respond to the analyst in ways that recreate their responses to the major figures in their own life.

Psychodynamic approaches

Therapeutic approaches that derive from psychoanalytic theory, which asserts that clinical symptoms arise from unconscious conflicts rooted in childhood.

Ego psychology

A school of psychodynamic thought that emphasizes the skills and adaptive capacities of the reality-oriented portion of the self.

Object relations

Theorized that relationships with important others, whom they rather oddly referred to as “objects,” are a crucial and relatively neglected motive underlying human behavior.

Interpersonal therapy (IPT)

Focused on helping patients understand how they interact with others and then learn better ways of interacting and communicating.

Humanistic approach

An approach to therapy centered around the idea that people must take responsibility for their lives and actions. They believe that psychoanalysis is too concerned with basic urges, tension reduction, and the past.

Client centered therapy

As defined by Carl Rogers, it seeks to help clients accept themselves as they are and to be themselves with no pretense or self-imposed limits. The therapist must listen non-judgmentally.

Genuineness, unconditional positive regard, and empathetic understanding.

The three factors crucial to a therapist’s success under the humanistic approach

Motivational interviewing

A brief, non confrontational, client-centered intervention designed to change problematic behaviors by drawing out a person’s goals ,reducing ambivalence, and clarifying discrepancies between how individuals are and how they say they would like to live.

Gestalt therapy

Created by Fritz Perls, a form of humanistic therapy that aims to help patients integrate inconsistent aspects of themselves into a coherent whole by increasing self-awareness and self-acceptance.

Focusing

A technique where the client is asked what they are feeling in the moment.

Hot seat technique

When the therapist directly challenges or confronts the client.

Empty chair technique

When clients imagine being seated across from another person, and then telling the imaginary person honestly what they feel.

Experiential therapies

The collective term for modern humanistic therapies. Mixes client centered and gestalt approaches.

Behavioral approaches

A family of therapeutic approaches based on the idea that problematic behaviors are the result of learning.

Exposure techniques

Behavioral techniques designed to remove the anxiety connected to a feared stimulus through repeated approach toward the feared stimulus. Based on classical conditioning

Token economics

A behavioral therapy technique based on operant conditioning in which patients’ positive behaviors are reinforced with tokens that they can exchange for desirable items.

Contingency management

A behavioral therapy in which certain behaviors are reliably followed by well-defined consequences. Based on operant conditioning.

Modeling

A behavioral therapy technique based on observational learning in which patients learn new skills or change their behavior by watching and imitating another person.

Vicarious reinforcement

A form of modeling in which the learner acquires a conditioned response merely by observing another participant being conditioned.

Cognitive approaches

A family of therapeutic approaches based on the idea that maladaptive behaviors arise due to errors in thinking.

Rational emotive behavioral therapy

A form of cognitive therapy, pioneered by Albert Ellis, in which the therapist actively challenges the patient’s irrational beliefs.

Cognitive therapy

An approach to therapy that tries to change patients’ habitual modes of thinking about themselves, their situation, and their future.

I am unlovable

One belief in the negative cognitive triad

It’s a cruel world out there

A second belief in the negative cognitive triad

Things are only going to get worse

The third belief in the negative cognitive triad

Cognitive restructuring

A set of cognitive therapy techniques for changing a person’s maladaptive beliefs or interpretations through persuasion and confrontation.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)

A hybrid form of psychotherapy focused on changing the patient’s habitual interpretations of the world and ways of behaving;

Third wave therapies

The latest generation of cognitive-behavioral therapies that does not attempt to directly modify thoughts or behaviors, but rather seeks to modify the hold that our thoughts have on us.

Acceptance and commitment therapy

This therapeutic goal is to make it clear that clients can pursue valued goals despite having unwanted thoughts and feelings.

Mindfulness-based stress reduction

Draws on Eastern meditative traditions. This therapy teaches people to be fully present in the moment, and to observe their thoughts, feelings, and sensations nonjudgmentally, viewing them as ever changing products of their mind rather than something of greater substance.

Group therapy

A form of therapy in which two or more patients meet with one or more therapists at a time.

Psychotropic medications

Medications that control, or at least moderate, the symptoms of some psychological disorders.

Typical antipsychotics

First-generation medications that block the neurotransmission of dopamine. Less effective in treating negative symptoms.

Atypical antipsychotics

Newer medications that block the neurotransmission of dopamine and also may have a more selective effect on particular subsets of dopamine neurons, and also lead to alterations in serotonin neurotransmission. Targets both positive and negative symptoms.

Deinstitutionalization

A movement that began in the 1950s that aimed to provide better, less expensive care for chronically mentally ill individuals in their own communities rather than at large, centralized hospitals.

Monoamine oxidase (MAO) inhibitors

Antidepressant that increases amounts of norepinephrine and serotonin available for synaptic transmission. Needs to be dietary restrictions when taken.

Tricyclic antidepressants

Antidepressant that increases amounts of norepinephrine and serotonin available for synaptic transmission. More widely used.

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs)

Antidepressants that act minimally on norepinephrine and dopamine and maximally on serotonin turnover in the brain. Includes prozac, lexapro, zoloft, paxil, celexa.

Atypical antidepressants

Work in various ways on serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine systems. Includes wellbutrin and effexor.

Mood stabilizers

A medication that treats manic, mixed, or depressive states. Includes lithium, depakote, and tegretol.

Anxiolytics

A type of drug that alleviates the symptoms of anxiety; also called a tranquilizer.

Benzodiazepines

Most commonly prescribed anxiolytic, includes xanax, ativan, and klonopin. Increases neurotransmission at synapses containing the neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutric acid (GABA).

Beta blocker

A medication that controls autonomic arousal and thereby decreases the negative spiral that occurs when a person who is anxious feels even more anxious when sensing a strong bodily response to an anxiety-producing situation.

Tardive dyskinesia

Debilitating motor symptoms like uncontrollable motor tics and facial twitches

Psychosurgery

Brain surgery performed to alleviate symptoms of psychological disorders that cannot be alleviated using psychotherapy, medication, or other standard treatments; the surgery removes sections of the brain or disconnects them from each other.

Lobotomy

A type of psychosurgery in which the neurosurgeon severs some or all of the connections between subcortical structures, such as the thalamus and the frontal lobes.

Electroconvulsive therapy (ETC)

A biological treatment, mostly used for cases of severe depression, in which a brief electric current is passed through the brain to produce a convulsive seizure.

Vagal nerve stimulation

A biological treatment for depression that involves electrically stimulating the vagus nerve with a small battery-powered implant

Deep brain stimulation (DBS)

The insertion of an electrode deep in a patient’s brain to alter the activity of specific brain regions. Based on the finding that severe forms of psychopathology are often associated with abnormalities in the activation levels of certain brain systems.

Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS)

A treatment for depression that involves applying rapid pulses of magnetic stimulation to the brain from a coil held near the scalp.

Regression to the mean

People go to therapy when things were at their lowest; they then started to feel less horrible after starting therapy, but they would have started to feel better even if they had not gone for therapy.

Spontaneous improvement

Clinical improvement not associated with a clinical intervention.

Waitlist control condition

In randomized controlled trials, a control condition in which patients receive delayed treatment rather than no treatment. Before being treated, they are compared to patients treated earlier.

Common factors

A factor related to therapy outcome that is common to many different types of treatment

Empirically supported treatments

A clinical method that research has shown to be effective for treating a given disorder.

Dodo bird verdict

An expression used to summarize the comparative effectiveness of different forms of psychotherapy. According to the dodo bird in Alice in Wonderland, “everybody has won and all must have prizes.” This means that all the major forms of psychotherapy are equally effective.

Therapeutic alliance

The relationship between therapist and client that helps many clients feel hopeful and supported.

Eclecticism

An approach to treatment that deliberately weaves together multiple types of therapy.

Mix and match approach

When the therapist draws upon many different therapeutic techniques when working with a client.

Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT)

An eclectic therapy for treating borderline personality disorder that includes elements of cognitive, behavioral, humanistic, and psychodynamic therapies.

Matched treatment

When the therapist carefully assesses a client and then selects the best therapy or combination of therapies for that person’s presenting complaint. The therapist sticks to empirically validated treatments.