AP Psychology Chapter 15: Treatment

Psychotherapy

The treatment of psychological disorders through talking and other psychological methods

Psychiatrists

Medical doctors who have completed special training in the treatment of psychological disorders

Psychologists

Among therapists, those who have completed a master's or (usually) a doctoral degree in clinical psychology and who may have received additional specialty training

Psychoanalysis

A method of psychotherapy that seeks to help clients gain insight by recognizing and understanding unconscious thoughts and emotions

Latent Content

The supposed underlying meaning of one's dream

Manifest Content

The story line plot of one's dream

Transference

The unconscious process of in which childhood feelings and conflicts about parents and other significant people were being projected onto the therapist

Client-Centered Therapy (Person-Centered Therapy)

A therapy that allows the client to decide what to talk about, without direction, judgment, or interpretation from the therapist

Unconditional Positive Regard (Acceptance)

A therapist attitude that conveys caring for and recognition of the client as a valued person

Empathy

The therapist's attempt to appreciate and understand how the world looks from the client's point of view

Active Listening (Reflection)

Conveying empathy on the part of the therapist by paraphrasing a client's statements and noting accompanying feelings

Congruence

Consistency between a therapist's feelings and the therapist's behavior toward the client

Gestalt Therapy

An active treatment designed to help clients get in touch with genuine feelings and disown foreign ones

Behavior Therapy

Treatments that use classical conditioning principles to change behavior

Behavior Modification

Treatments that use operant conditioning methods to change behavior

Cognitive Behavior Therapy

Learning based treatment methods that help clients change the way they think, as well as the way they behave

Systematic Desesitization

A behavioral treatment for anxiety in which clients visualize a graduated series of anxiety provoking stimuli while remaining relaxed

Modeling

Demonstrating desirable behaviors as ways of teaching them to clients

Token Economy Programs

Systems for improving the behavior of institutionalized clients in which desirable behaviors are rewarded with tokens that can be exchanged for desired items or activities

Extinction

The gradual disappearance of a conditioned response or operant behavior through nonreinforcement

Flooding

An exposure technique for reducing anxiety that involves keeping a person in a feared but harmless situation

Exposure Therapy

Behavior therapy methods in which clients remain in the presence of strong anxiety-provoking stimuli until the intensity of their emotional reactions decrease

Aversion Conditioning

A method that uses classical conditioning to create a negative response to a particular stimulus

Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT)

A treatment designed to identify and change self-defeating thoughts that lead to anxiety and other symptoms of disorder

Cognitive Therapy

A treatment in which the therapist helps clients notice and change negative thoughts associated with anxiety and depression

Group Therapy

Psychotherapy involving several unrelated clients

Family Therapy

Treatment of two or more individuals from the same family

Couples Therapy

A form of therapy focusing on improving communication between partners

Evidence Based Practice

The selection of treatment methods based mainly on empirical evidence of their effectiveness

Empirically Supported Therapies (ESTs)

Treatments whose effects have been validated by controlled experimental research

Psychosurgery

Surgical procedures that destroy tissue in small regions of the brain in an effort to treat psychological disorders

Electroconvulsive Shock Therapy (EST/ECT)

Brief electrical shock administered to the brain, usually to reduce depression that does not respond to drug treatments

Neuroleptic Drugs

Medications that alleviate the symptoms of severe disorders such as schizophrenia

Antidepressant Drugs

Medications that relive depression

Tranquilizing Drugs (Anxiolytics)

Drugs that reduce feelings of anxiety

Deinstitutionalization

moving people with psychological or developmental disabilities from highly structured institutions to home- or community-based settings

cognitive restructuring

a therapeutic approach that teaches clients to question the automatic beliefs, assumptions, and predictions that often lead to negative emotions and to replace negative thinking with more realistic and positive beliefs

cognitive triad

negative thoughts about self, situation, and the future

Fear Hierarchies

feared objects, activities or situations are ranked according to difficulty. They begin with mildly or moderately difficult exposures, then progress to harder ones.

dialectical behavior therapy

A form of treatment in which the focus is on getting people to accept who they are regardless of whether it matches their ideal.

Hypnosis

a social interaction in which one person suggests to another that certain perceptions, feelings, thoughts, or behaviors will spontaneously occur

tardive dyskinesia

involuntary movements of the facial muscles, tongue, and limbs; a possible neurotoxic side effect of long-term use of antipsychotic drugs that target certain dopamine receptors

Lesioning

destroying a piece of the brain

transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)

the use of strong magnets to briefly interrupt normal brain activity as a way to study brain regions

lobotomy

A now-rare psychosurgical procedure once used to calm uncontrollably emotional or violent patients. The procedure cut the nerves that connect the frontal lobes to the emotion-controlling centers of the inner brain.