AP Psych Treatments

Deinstitutionalization: The policy and process of reducing long‑term psychiatric hospital care by discharging patients into community‑based treatment and support services.

Evidence‑Based Interventions: Therapeutic techniques and programs that have been scientifically tested and shown to produce reliable, replicable benefits.

Cultural Humility: A lifelong commitment to self‑evaluation and self‑critique regarding one’s own cultural assumptions, combined with openness to learning from clients about their cultural identities.

Therapeutic Alliance: The collaborative, trusting relationship between therapist and client, characterized by agreement on goals, tasks, and a personal bond.

Nonmaleficence: The ethical principle requiring clinicians to avoid causing harm to clients, whether physical, psychological, or emotional.

Fidelity: The ethical duty of a therapist to remain faithful and loyal to clients by keeping promises, maintaining confidentiality, and honoring professional commitments.

Integrity: Adherence to moral and professional standards, including honesty, accuracy, and consistency in both research and clinical practice.

Respect for People’s Rights & Dignity: The ethical obligation to protect clients’ autonomy, privacy, and freedom from coercion, and to treat them with consideration and sensitivity.

Psychodynamic Therapies: A class of therapies derived from psychoanalytic theory that focus on unconscious processes, early life experiences, and the influence of past relationships on current behavior.

Free Association: A psychoanalytic technique in which clients are encouraged to say whatever comes to mind, without censorship, to reveal unconscious thoughts and feelings.

Dream Interpretation: The analysis of the manifest content of dreams to uncover latent, symbolic meanings that reflect unconscious conflicts or desires.

Person‑Centered Therapy: A humanistic approach developed by Carl Rogers that emphasizes unconditional positive regard, empathy, and congruence to facilitate clients’ self‑exploration and personal growth.

Active Listening: A communication skill in which the listener fully concentrates, reflects, and clarifies the speaker’s message to demonstrate understanding and foster rapport.

Unconditional Positive Regard: The therapist’s nonjudgmental acceptance and support of a client, regardless of what the client says or does.

Group Therapy: A treatment modality in which one or more therapists lead a small group of clients who interact and support each other in achieving therapeutic goals.

Individual Therapy: A one‑on‑one treatment setting where a therapist works privately with a single client to address personal issues and promote change.

Cognitive Therapies: A family of therapies that focus on identifying and modifying distorted or maladaptive thought patterns to improve emotional regulation and behavior.

Maladaptive Thinking: Rigid, inaccurate, or negatively biased thought patterns that contribute to emotional distress and dysfunctional behavior.

Cognitive Restructuring: A therapeutic process that helps clients recognize, challenge, and replace irrational or unhelpful thoughts with more adaptive alternatives.

Cognitive Triad: Aaron Beck’s model describing three key negative thought patterns in depression: negative views of the self, the world, and the future.

Applied Behavior Analysis: A systematic approach using principles of learning (especially operant conditioning) to assess and modify socially significant behaviors.

Exposure Therapy: A behavioral treatment in which clients confront feared objects or situations in a controlled manner until anxiety diminishes.

Systematic Desensitization: A behavioral technique combining relaxation training with gradual exposure to a hierarchy of anxiety‑provoking stimuli.

Aversion Therapy: A form of behavior therapy that pairs an unwanted behavior with an unpleasant stimulus to reduce the behavior’s occurrence.

Token Economies: A behavior modification system in which individuals earn tokens for desired behaviors that can later be exchanged for privileges or rewards.

Biofeedback: A technique that uses real‑time monitoring of physiological processes (e.g., heart rate, muscle tension) to teach clients self‑regulation skills.

Cognitive‑Behavioral Therapies: Integrated approaches that combine cognitive restructuring with behavioral techniques to change both thought patterns and actions.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy: A cognitive‑behavioral treatment developed for borderline personality disorder that emphasizes balancing acceptance and change through skills training.

Rational‑Emotive Behavior Therapy: Albert Ellis’s cognitive therapy focusing on identifying and disputing irrational beliefs to reduce emotional distress and self‑defeating behaviors.

Hypnosis: A procedure in which a therapist guides a client into a trance‑like state of focused attention and heightened suggestibility to facilitate therapeutic change.

Psychotropic Medication Therapy: The use of medications that affect brain chemistry to alleviate symptoms of mental disorders, often used in conjunction with psychotherapy.

Psychoactive Medication: Any drug that alters mood, perception, cognition, or behavior by acting on the central nervous system.

Antidepressants: Medications (e.g., SSRIs, SNRIs) designed to alleviate symptoms of depression by increasing levels of neurotransmitters such as serotonin or norepinephrine.

Anti‑Anxiety Medication: Drugs (e.g., benzodiazepines) prescribed to reduce excessive anxiety and promote relaxation by enhancing the action of inhibitory neurotransmitters like GABA.

Lithium: A mood stabilizer commonly used to treat bipolar disorder by modulating neurotransmitter activity and reducing manic and depressive episodes.

Antipsychotic Medications: Drugs that primarily block dopamine receptors to reduce symptoms of psychosis, such as hallucinations and delusions, in disorders like schizophrenia.

Tardive Dyskinesia: A potentially irreversible movement disorder characterized by involuntary, repetitive movements, often resulting from long‑term use of first‑generation antipsychotics.

Psychosurgery: Surgical procedures that intentionally alter brain tissue to treat severe mental disorders, typically considered only when other treatments have failed.

Lesioning: A form of psychosurgery involving the deliberate destruction of specific brain regions to alleviate psychiatric symptoms, now largely obsolete.

TMS (Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation): A noninvasive neuromodulation technique that uses magnetic pulses to stimulate targeted brain areas, often used to treat depression.

Electroconvulsive Therapy: A medical treatment in which controlled electrical currents induce brief seizures under anesthesia to rapidly relieve severe depression and other disorders.

Lobotomy: A historical psychosurgical procedure that severed connections in the frontal lobes to alter behavior, abandoned due to severe side effects and ethical concerns.