9. Treatment of Psychological Disorders Flashcards
What are the goals of behavioural treatment?
- provide relief from distress
- increase insight to problems
- teach coping skills
- identify and resolve ‘root causes’
What are the theoretical approaches to treatment?
- Psychodynamic/psychoanalytic
- behaviour therapy
- cognitive (behavioural) therapy
- humanistic therapies
- family and systematic therapies
- drug treatments (pharmacology)
What are the assumptions of the psychodynamic therapies?
- unconscious conflicts originate from early life
- we then create defense mechanisms
- this leads to observable symptoms
What is the aim of psychodynamic therapies?
- identify the unconscious conflicts
- bring them into conscious awareness and help develop strategies to resolve these conflicts
What is the main psychodynamic therapy?
psychoanalysis
What is the structure of psychodynamic therapy?
- very variable
- often lifelong
What are techniques used in psychodynamic therapies?
- free association (trigger word given and patient says what comes to mind)
- dream analysis
What are the assumptions of behaviour therapy?
- psychological disorders develop from ‘faulty learning’
- this is via both classical and operant conditioning
What is the aim of behaviour therapy?
- use associative learning principles
- particularly extinction: unlearn/ relearn associations
What are the types of techniques used for behaviour therapy?
What type of associative learning are they?
- flooding (exposure): classical
- contingency management: operant
- aversion therapy: classical
- response shaping: operant
What are the assumptions of cognitive therapy (CBT)?
- distorted ways of thinking
- cognitive biases directly cause symptoms
What are the aims of cognitive therapy?
-change dysfunctional cognitions that underline disorders
What are the assumptions of humanistic therapies?
- holistic
- consider the person as a whole instead of the specific cognitions, behaviour or emotions that appear disordered
What are the aims of humanistic therapies?
- encourage client to find their own solutions
- enables them to move from a negative state to another
What techniques are used in humanistic therapies?
- unconditional positive regard (non judgemental)
- non-directive (active listening and providing advice when asked)
What are the assumptions of family and systematic therapies?
- many disorders arise from dysfunctional relationships between close family members
What is a type of humanistic therapy?
client-centred therapy
What are the aims and techniques of family and systematic therapies?
- therapist leads discussion with the patient and their family members
- therapists theoretical orientation is important
What are the assumptions of drug therapies?
- psychological disorders are caused by brain dysfunction
- this can be corrected/temporarily alleviated by medication
What are the limitations of drug therapies?
- side effects
- medicalises everyday problems of living
- palliative
- many drugs are ineffective for those with mild symptoms
Why is the evaluation of drug treatment difficult?
- subjective as to what counts as success e.g self report is not objective
- internal validity: therapy should work because its assumptions are corrected
Why is evaluation of treatment important?
- disorders have significant costs: need to know what works
- some treatments may work well in the short term, but have little long term benefits
- wastes money
What’s a case study?
detailed report of treatment provided to an individual and their outcome
What’s a case series?
descriptive report of treatment and patient outcomes in groups of patients who have received different types of treatment
What are issues with RCTs?
- high drop out rates: especially control group
-expensive - doesn’t take into account the patients desired therapy
- focusses on statistical significance rather than clinical
- findings may not generalise to typical settings
- biases: publication, investigator, commercial interests
How do we combine evidence across studies?
- narrative summaries
- meta analysis
- meta meta analysis
