© 2008 the mcgraw-hill companies, inc. chapter 16: treatment of psychological disorders
TRANSCRIPT
© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Approaches to Treatment
• Psychotherapy– Treatment in which a trained professional – a
therapist – uses psychological techniques to help someone overcome psychological difficulties and disorders
• Biomedical therapy– Relies on drugs and other medical procedures
to improve psychological functioning
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Psychodynamic Approaches to Therapy
• Seeks to bring unresolved past conflicts and unacceptable impulses from the unconscious into the conscious, where patients may deal with the problems more effectively– Defense mechanisms– Psychoanalysis: Freud’s Therapy
• Free association• Transference
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Behavioral Approaches to Therapy
• Treatment approaches that build o the basic processes of learning, such as reinforcement and extinction, and assume that normal and abnormal behavior are both learned
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Behavioral Approaches to Therapy
• Aversive conditioning– Form of therapy that reduces the frequency of
undesired behavior by paring an aversive, unpleasant stimulus with undesired behavior
• Systematic desensitization– Technique in which gradual exposure to an
anxiety-producing stimulus is paired with relaxation to extinguish the response of anxiety
• Hierarchy of fears
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Behavioral Approaches to Therapy
• Systematic desensitization
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Behavioral Approaches to Therapy
• Operant conditioning techniques– Token system
• Contingency contracting
– Observational learning
• Dialectical behavior therapy– Focus in on getting people to accept who they
are, regardless of whether it matches their ideal
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Cognitive Approaches to Therapy
• Teaches people to think in more adaptive ways by changing their dysfunctional cognitions about the world and themselves– Cognitive-behavioral
• Incorporates basic principles of learning
– Rational-emotive • Attempts to restructure a person’s belief system
into a more realistic, rational, and logical set of views
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Cognitive Approaches to Therapy
• Rational-emotive behavior therapy
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Humanistic Therapy
• Underlying rationale is that people have control of their behavior, can make choices about their lives, and are essentially responsible for solving their own problems
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Humanistic Therapy
• Person-centered therapy– “Client centered” therapy– Goal is to reach one’s potential for self-
actualization– Unconditional positive regard– empathic
• Gestalt therapy– Completing any “unfinished business” from
the past that affects the present
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Group Therapy and Family Therapy
• Group therapy– Several unrelated people meet with a
therapist to discuss some aspect of their psychological functioning
• Family therapy– Involves two or more members of the same
family, one (or more) of whose problems led to treatment
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Evaluating Psychotherapy
• Psychotherapy– Is effective for most people– Doesn’t work for everyone– Certain specific types of treatments are
somewhat, although not invariably, better for specific types of problems
– No single form of therapy works best– Spontaneous remission
• Recovery without treatment
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Biomedical Therapy: Biological Approaches to Treatment
• Therapy that focuses on brain chemistry and other neurological factors– Drug therapy
• Control of psychological disorders through drugs• Antipsychotic drugs• Antidepressant drugs• Lithium• Antianxiety drugs
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Biomedical Therapy: Biological Approaches to Treatment
• SSRIs – selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors
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Electroconvulsive Therapy
• Electric current of 70 to 150 volts is briefly administered to a patient’s head, causing a loss of consciousness and often causing seizures
• Transcranial magnetic stimulation– Alternative to ETC– Precise magnetic pulse is directed to a
specific area of the brain
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Psychosurgery
• Brain surgery in which the object is to reduce symptoms of mental disorder– Prefrontal lobotomy
• Surgically destroying or removing parts of a patient’s frontal lobes that were thought to control emotionality
– Cingulotomy• Used with rare cases of OCD
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Community Psychology: Focus on Prevention
• Geared toward preventing or minimizing the incidence of psychological disorders– Deinstitutionalization
• Movement of former mental patients out of institutions and into the community
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Seeking Therapy
• You should feel comfortable with your therapist
• Therapist should have appropriate training and credentials and should be licensed by appropriate state and local agencies
• You should feel that you are making progress after therapy has begun, despite occasional setbacks