Therapy and Treatment

Ch. 16


Trephining: a hole was made in the skull to release spirits from the body. Often leading to death.

Asylums: first institutions created for housing people with psychological disorders.

Dorothea Dix: journalist who investigated asylums and wanted to make a change.

  • helped ratify the 19th thingy so women could vote

1954: antipsychotic meds were introduced.

1975: garner funding for community mental health facilities

  • started the process of deinstitutionalization.

Deinstitutionalization: the closing of large asylums, by providing for people to stay in their communities and be treated locally.


Psychoanalysis

Free association: let the patient tell you wtv they’re feeling.

Dream analysis: interpret underlying meaning of dreams.

Transference: patient transfers all the positive or negative emotions associated with their other relationships to the psychoanalyst.

Psychodynamic psychotherapy: talk therapy with regards to how the unconscious and childhood trauma impact behavior.


Behavior Therapy

Classical conditioning

Counterconditioning: a client learns a new response to a stimulus that has previously elicited an undesirable behavior.

Aversive conditioning: uses an unpleasant stimulus to stop an undesirable behavior.

    Antabuse—When a person takes Antabuse and then consumes alcohol, uncomfortable side effects result including nausea, vomiting, increased heart rate, heart palpitations, severe headache, and shortness of breath.

Exposure therapy: a therapist seeks to treat clients’ fears or anxiety by presenting them with the object or situation that causes their problem, with the idea that they will eventually get used to it.

Systemic desensitization: form of exposure therapy used to treat phobias and anxiety disorders by exposing a person to the feared object or situation through a stimulus hierarchy.

Applied behavior analysis: operant (after) conditioning technique designed to reinforce positive behaviors and punish unwanted behaviors.


Cognitive Therapy

  • help become aware of cognitive distortions

  1. overgeneralization: someone takes a small situation and makes it huge.

    1. instead of saying, “This particular person was not interested in me,” the man says, “I am ugly, a loser, and no one is ever going to be interested in me.”

  2. polarized (black-or-white) thinking

  3. jumping to conclusions: assuming that people are thinking negatively about you or reacting negatively to you, even though there is no evidence.

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT): form of psychotherapy that aims to change cognitive distortions and self-defeating behaviors


Humanistic Therapy

  • commonsense

  • non-directive approach → free play


Biomedical

Antipsychotics: positive symptoms

Atypical antipsychotics: negative symptoms

  • both for schizophrenia


Family Therapy

Systems approach: views the family as a single, emotional unit rather than a collection of individuals, focusing on how interactions and relationships shape behavior

Structural: therapist examines and discusses with the family the boundaries and structure of the family: who makes the rules, who sleeps in the bed with whom, how decisions are made, and what are the boundaries within the family.
- long term

Strategic: therapist guides the therapy sessions and develops treatment plans for each family member for specific problems that can be addressed in a short amount of time.

  • short term

Token economy: controlled setting where individuals are reinforced for desirable behaviors with tokens (e.g., poker chip) that be exchanged for items or privileges