ap psych- unit 13- treatment of disorders

psychotherapy

treatment involving psychological techniques; consists of interactions between a trained therapist and someone seeking to overcome psychological difficulties or achieve personal growth.

psychoanalysis

Freud's theory of personality and therapeutic technique that focuses on probing past defense mechanisms of repression and rationalization to understand the unconscious cause of a problem.

free association

primary tool for revealing the unconscious in which patients report any and all conscious thoughts and ideas

hypnosis

the induction of a state of consciousness in which a person loses the power of voluntary action and is highly responsive to suggestion or direction. It can help recover suppressed memories or to allow modification of behavior.

transference

in psychoanalysis, the patient's transfer to the analyst of emotions linked with other relationships (such as love or hatred for a parent).

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.

client-centered therapy

a humanistic therapy, developed by Carl Rogers, in which the therapist uses techniques such as active listening within a genuine, accepting, empathic environment to facilitate clients' growth. (Also called person-centered therapy.)

active listening

empathic listening in which the listener echoes, restates, and clarifies. A feature of Rogers' client-centered therapy.

unconditional positive regard

a caring, accepting, nonjudgmental attitude, which Carl Rogers believed would help clients to develop self-awareness and self-acceptance.

behavior therapy

therapy that applies learning principles to the elimination of unwanted behaviors.

aversion therapy

pairing an aversive stimulus repeatedly with the behavior that the client wishes to stop.

exposure therapy

behavioral techniques, such as systematic desensitization, that treat anxieties by exposing people (in imagination or actuality) to the things they fear and avoid.

systematic desensitization

a type of exposure therapy that associates a pleasant relaxed state with gradually increasing anxiety-triggering stimuli. Commonly used to treat phobias.

virtual reality exposure therapy

An anxiety treatment that progressively exposes people to simulations of their greatest fears, such as airplane flying, spiders, or public speaking.

aversive conditioning

a type of counterconditioning that associates an unpleasant state (such as nausea) with an unwanted behavior (such as drinking alcohol).

token economy

an operant conditioning procedure in which people earn a token of some sort for exhibiting a desired behavior and can later exchange the tokens for various privileges or treats.

cognitive therapy

therapy that teaches people new, more adaptive ways of thinking and acting; based on the assumption that thoughts intervene between events and our emotional reactions.

Aaron Beck

formulated the cognitive therapy.

cognitive-behavioral therapy

a popular integrative therapy that combines cognitive therapy (changing self-defeating thinking) with behavior therapy (changing behavior).

family therapy

therapy that treats the family as a system. Views an individual's unwanted behaviors as influenced by, or directed at, other family members.

biomedical therapy

prescribed medications or medical procedures that act directly on the patient's nervous system.

psychopharmacology

the study of the effects of drugs on mind and behavior

antipsychotic drugs

drugs used to treat schizophrenia and other forms of severe thought disorder by blocking the neural receptors for dopamine.

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

antianxiety drugs

drugs used to control anxiety and agitation

antidepressant drugs

drugs used to treat depression; also increasingly prescribed for anxiety. Different types work by altering the availability of various neurotransmitters

selective reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs)

increase the amount of neurotransmitter at the synaptic cleft by blocking the reuptake mechanism of the cell.

benzodiazepines

cause muscle relaxation and a feeling of tranquility (Valium, Librium).

lithium carbonate

a salt that's effective in the treatment of bipolar disorder.

eletroconvulsive therapy (ECT)

a biomedical therapy for severely depressed patients in which a brief electric current is sent through the brain of an anesthetized patient

psychosurgery

surgery that removes or destroys brain tissue in an effort to change behavior

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

extinction procedures

designed to weaken maladaptive responses.

flooding

exposing a client to the stimulus that causes the undesirable response.

rational-emotive behavior therapy (REBT)

formulated by Albert Ellis, based on the idea that people recite statements to themselves that express maladaptive thoughts when confronted with situations. The goal of REBT is to change the maladaptive thoughts and emotional response by confronting the irrational thoughts directly.