15 / Treatment of Psychological Disorders

What are the three major cateogires that appraoches to treatment can be classified into?

1. Insight therapies

2. Behavior therapies

3. Biomedical therapies

What is insight therapy?

Insight therapy is talk therapy in the tradition of Freud’s psychoanalysis.

Clients engage in complex, often lengthy verbal interactions with their therapist.

What are behavior therapies based on?

Behavior therapies are based on the principles of learning.

Instead of emphasizing personal insights, behavior therapists make direct efforts to alter problematic responses (e.g., phobias) and maladaptive habits (e.g., drug use).

What are biomedical therapies?

Biomedical therapies involve interventions to a person’s biological functioning.

Most commonly drug therapy and electroconvulsive (shock) therapy.

What are the two principal professions involved in the delivery of psychotherapy?

psychology and psychiatry.

What do clinical psychologists and counseling psychologists specialize in?

the diagnosis and treatment of psychological disorders and everyday behavioral problems.

What do psychiatrists specialize in?

Psychiatrists are physicians who specialize in the diagnosis and treatment of psychological disorders.

Describe how psychiatrists are different from psychologists.

• psychiatrists devote more time to relatively severe disorders (schizophrenia, mood disorders) and less time to everyday marital, family, job, and school problems.

• psychiatrists have MD degree.

• psychiatrists are more likely to use psychoanalysis and less likely to use group therapies or behavior therapies.

• contemp. psychiatrists increasingly depend on medication as primary treatment.

Insight therapies

involve verbal interactions intended to enhance clients’ self knowledge, and thus promote healthful changes in personality and behavior.

Psychoanalysis

is an insight therapy that emphasizes the recovery of unconscious conflicts, motives, and defenses through techniques such as free association and transference.

Neuroses

anxiety-dominated disturbances

ex. phobic, panic, obsessive-compulsive, and conversion disorders

What do clients do in free association?

clients spontaneously express their thoughts and feelings exactly as they occur, with as little censorship as possible.

In free associating, clients talk about anything that comes to mind, no matter how trivial, silly, or embarrassing it might be.

What do therapists do in dream analysis?

they interpret the symbolic meaning of the client’s dreams.

Resistance

refers to largely unconscious defensive maneuvers intended to hinder the progress of therapy.

Resistance is assumed to be an inevitable part of the psychoanalytic process.

Transference

occurs when clients start relating to their therapists in ways that mimic critical relationships in their lives.

Are classical psychoanalysis done as done by Freud widely practiced anymore? Are they still available?

No, they are not widely practiced anymore, but they are still available.

What are some other central features of modern psychodynamic therapies?

1. a focus on emotional experience

2. exploration of efforts to avoid distressing thoughts and feelings

3. identification of recurring patterns in patients’ life experiences

4. discussion of past experiences, especially in early childhood

5. analysis of interpersonal relations

6. a focus on the therapeutic relationship itself

7. exploration of dreams and other aspects of fantasy life.

What is client-centered therapy?

an insight therapy that emphasizes providing a supportive emotional climate for clients, who play a major role in determining the pace and direction of their therapy.

According to Rogers, the […] of therapy is not as important as the emotional […] in which the therapy takes place.

According to Rogers, the process of therapy is not as important as the emotional climate in which the therapy takes place.

To create a supportive atmosphere, client-centered therapies must provide what three conditions?

1. genuineness (honest communication)

2. unconditioned positive regard (nonjudgemental acceptance of the client)

3. accurate empathy (understanding of the client’s point of view)

What is the therapist’s role in client-centered therapy in one word?

clarification

What is group therapy?

the simultaneous treatment of several clients in a group.

What does couples or marital therapy involve?

It involves the treatment of both partners in a committed, intimate relationship, in which the main focus is on relationship issues.

Not limited to married couples; frequently provided to cohabiting & same-sex couples.

What does family therapy involve?

It involves the treatment of a family unit as a whole, in which the main focus is on family dynamics and communication.

Spontaneous remission

when psychological disorders sometimes clear up on their own.

What are behavior therapies?

Behavior therapies involve the application of the principles of learning and conditioning to direct efforts to change clients’ maladaptive behaviors.

What are the two assumptions that behavior therapies are based on?

1. Behavior is a product of learning.

2. What has been learned can be unlearned.

Systematic desensitization

a behavior therapy used to reduce clients’ phobic responses.

Describe the steps of systematic desensitization.

1. The therapist helps the clients build an anxiety hierarchy.

2. Training the client in deep muscle relaxation.

3. Client tries to work through the hierarchy, learning to remain relazed while imaging each stimulus.

Exposure therapies

clients are confronted with situations they fear so they learn that these situations are really harmless.

Social skills training

is a behavior therapy designed to improve interpersonal skills that emphasizes modeling, behavioral rehearsal, and shaping.

With modeling, clients are encouraged to […].

With modeling, clients are encouraged to watch socially skilled friend and colleagues so they can acquire appropriate respones through observation.

In behavioral rehearsal, clients practice […]. The therapist provides […].

In behavioral rehearsal, clients practice social techniques in structured role-playing exercises. The therapist provides corrective feedback and uses approval to reinforce progress.

Cognitive behavioral treatments

use combinations of verbal interventions and behavior modification techniques to help clients change maladaptive patterns of thinking.

What are some cognitive behavioral treatments that have proven extremely influential?

• Albert Ellis’s rational-emotive behavior therapy

• Aaron Beck’s cognitive therapy

Cognitive therapy uses […].

Cognitive therapy uses specific strategies to correct habitual thinking errors that underlie various types of disorders.

Biomedical therapies

are physiological interventions intended to reduce symptoms associated with psychological disorders.

Antianxiety drugs

reduce tension, apprehension, and nervousness.

Antipsychotic drugs

are used to gradually reduce psychotic symptoms, including hyperactivity, mental confusion, hallucinations, and delusions.

Tardive dyskinesia

is a neurological disorder makred by involuntary writhing and tic-like movements of the mouth, tongue, face, hands, or feet.

Antidepressant drugs

gradually elevate mood and help bring people out of a depression

Mood stabilizers

are drugs used to control mood swings in patients with bipolar mood disorders.

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT)

is a biomedical treatment in which electric shock is used to produce a cortical seizure accompanid by convulsions.

Eclecticism

in the practice of therapy involves drawing ideas from two or more systems of therapy instead of committing to just one system.

Mental hospital

is a medical institution specializing in providing inpatient care for psychological disorders.

Deinstitutionalization

refers to transferring the treatment of mental illness from inpatient institutions to community-based facilities that emphasize outpatient care.

Placebo effects

occur when people’s expectations lead them to experience some change even though they receive a fake treatment.

Regression toward the mean

occurs when people who score extremely high or low on a trait are measured a second time, and their new scores fall closer to the mean (average).