Therapies

Class Notes

  • biomedical therapies- designed to alter brain functioning with biological or physical techniques

    • anti-depressant drugs

    • mood-stabilizing drugs (e.g. lamictal, lithium)

    • anti-anxiety drugs- lower sympathetic activity, reduce alertness, coordination and reaction time (e.g. valium, xanax); addiction potential

    • anti-psychotic drugs- reduce agitated behaviors, hallucinations, delusions, decreased activity of dopamine receptors( e.g. haloperidol, risperdal)

  • pros

    • minimize extreme symptoms

    • reduces long-term hospitalizations

    • easy

  • cons

    • numbing/missing out on important human experience

    • doesn’t address root causes (no cure)

    • costly

    • reliance/dependence

    • unknown long-term side effects

  • electroconvulsive therapy

    • involves passing electrical current through he brain

    • treats serious depression when drugs and psychotherapy have failed

  • repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation

    • powerful electromagnets generate pulsed magnetic fields that are targeted at specific areas of the brain to treat depression; improvements to depression with few side effects

  • deep brain stimulation

    • an experimental neuro-surgical procedure where two small holes are drilled into the skull and electrodes implanted through them

  • evaluating biomedical therapies

    • pros- valuable last-resort treatments

    • cons- potentially dangerous with serious or even fatal side effects; remains controversial, emerging evidence

Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory

  • levels of consciousness

    • conscious- what we’re currently aware of

    • preconscious- things we could be aware of if we tried

    • unconscious- large part of the mind that we aren’t aware of

  • three mental structures

    • ID (pleasure principle in unconscious) (devilish voice)

    • Ego (reality principles) (realistic)

    • Superego (the conscience, ideal self) (angelic voice)

  • consciousness= awareness

  • conscience= your values of right and wrong

  • goal=insight

  • focused on analyzing and bringing unconscious thoughts into conscious awareness

  • techniques in psychoanalysis theory

    • free association

    • dreams- latent and manifest content

    • transference- when patients project feelings for people in their lives on therapist

  • limitations

    • severe psychopathology

    • expensive

    • lack of empirical evidence

Cognitive behavioral therapy

  • present-focused, brief (3-4 months), and goal-oriented

  • Aaron Beck-triggering events (thoughts-emotions-response)

    • thoughts- internal dialogue

    • behaviors- what you do

    • emotions- how you feel

  • assumes that faulty thoughts (cognitions) are the primary source for problems

  • techniques

    • cognitive restructuring- identifying and changing thought patterns

  • use learning principles to reduce or eliminate maladaptive behaviors, or increase and add effective behaviors

  • basis includes classical, operant, and observational conditioning