1. Psychotherapy:
…it is a planned emotionally charged confiding interaction between a trained professional and a sufferer.
Video Clip

2. Major Theories used in treatment:
Psychoanalysis, Humanistic, Behavioral, Cognitive
Biomedical
We will look at each in terms of aims, methods, and limitations/criticisms.

3. Those who provide treatment:
Psychologist- doctoral degree that includes training in diagnosis and treatment of disorders.
Psychiatrist- M.D. who specializes in treatments of psychological orders.
Social Worker- part of a team in monitoring treatments.
Counselor- provides limited psychotherapy to those who do not have serious mental problems.

4. Ethics: All information must be kept confidential.
One exception- if the patient threatens to hurt someone else.

5. Psychoanalytic Treatment Aims:
Problems stem from childhood anxiety.
Insight therapy helps patients develop an understanding of inner conflicts.
Freud founding father of Psychoanalysis.
Psychodynamic therapists are the more modern adaptation.

6. Psychoanalytic Treatment Methods:
Emphasizes the importance of the unconscious mind and historical reconstruction.
Free Association- verbalization of any thoughts or feelings that come to conscious mind.
Dream Analysis- a patient’s unfulfilled wishes and desires are part of latent dream content.
Insight (interpretation) is offered.
Video

7. Humanistic Therapy Aims:
Emphasize a persons inherent potential for self-fulfillment.
Grow in self-awareness and self acceptance.
Focus on conscious thoughts, responsibility, growth, the present, and future.
Video

8. Humanistic Therapy Methods:
Client-centered therapy- focus on self perception rather than therapist interpretation.
Client and Therapist are equal parts of the healing process.
Emphasis is on active listening.
Client-centered therapy must have 3 conditions for it to work:
Genuineness
Unconditional positive regard
Empathy
Group Therapy
Family Therapy

9. Behavior Therapy Aims:
Emphasis on changing learned behaviors rather than understanding feelings.
Evolved out of classical conditioning and operant conditioning.
Common applications- Anxiety and Phobic Disorders.
Video

10. Behavior Therapy Methods:
Counterconditioning-
Systematic Desensitization- gradual decrease in anxiety by creating new associations for the stimulus. (virtual therapy)
Aversion Therapy- creates an unpleasant response to a previously enjoyable stimulus. (Antabuse)
Operant Conditioning- behavior modification, token economy.

11. Cognitive Therapy Aims:
Thinking controls our feelings.
Teach people new ways of thinking.
Used widely for depression.
Video

12. Cognitive Therapy Methods:
Therapist help clients to reverse negative beliefs.
Positive thinking exercises.
Cognitive-Behavior Therapy-
Integrates two styles.
Change the way we act and think.

13. The Biomedical Therapies
These include physical, medicinal, and other forms of biological therapies.
Drug Treatments
Surgery
Electric-shock therapy
Used if:
The client is too agitated, disoriented, or unresponsive for psychotherapy.
The disorder has a strong biological component.
Dangerous to themselves or others.

14. Biomedical Therapy Aims:
Specific medical procedures and medications that can help relieve symptoms of disorders.
Most often used in conjunction with talk therapy.

15. Biomedical Therapy Methods:
Drug therapy
Medications are divided into 4 categories:
Anti-psychotics-similar to dopamine
Anti-depressants-increase norepinephrine and serotonin
Anti-convulsants
Anti-anxiety
They reduce or increase activity at all receptor sites for NT.
Video of how NT and drugs (Zoloft) work.
Electroconvulsive- Shock therapy used to treat depression. rTMS modern approach.
Psychosurgery- least used. eg. Lobotomy

16. Evaluating Psychotherapies
Within psychotherapies cognitive therapies are most widely used, followed by psychoanalytic and family/group therapies.

17. The Relative Effectiveness of Different Therapies
Which psychotherapy would be most effective for treating a particular problem?
Disorder
Therapy
Depression
Behavior, Cognition, Interpersonal
Anxiety
Cognition, Exposure, Stress Inoculation
Bulimia
Cognitive-behavior
Phobia
Behavior
Bed Wetting
Behavior Modification
OBJECTIVE 14| Summarize the findings on which psychotherapies are most effective for specific disorders.