Chapter 18: Treating Psychological Disorders Flashcards
What does the psychological approach to reducing disorder involve?
It involves providing help to individuals or families through psychological therapy, including psychoanalysis, humanistic-oriented therapy, cognitive behavioural therapy, and other approaches.
What is the biomedical approach to reducing disorder based on?
It is based on the use of medications to treat mental disorders such as schizophrenia, depression, and anxiety, as well as the employment of brain intervention techniques, including electroconvulsive therapy, transcranial magnetic stimulation, and psychosurgery.
What does the social approach to reducing disorder focus on?
Changing the social environment in which individuals live to reduce the underlying causes of disorder. These approaches include group, couples, and family therapy, as well as community outreach programs.
What is a psychological assessment?
An evaluation of the patient’s psychological and mental health, used by by a therapist to systematically learn about the patient’s needs.
What is psychotherapy?
The professional treatment for psychological disorder through techniques designed to encourage communication of conflicts and insights.
What is psychodynamic therapy?
A psychological treatment based on Freudian and neo-Freudian personality theories in which the therapist helps the patient explore the unconscious dynamics of personality.
What is free association?
The therapist listens while the client talks about whatever comes to mind, without any censorship or filtering.
What is dream analysis?
The therapist analyzes the symbolism of dreams in an effort to probe the unconscious thoughts of the client and interpret their significance.
What is insight? How do patient’s usually respond to insight?
An understanding of the unconscious causes of the disorder. Often times a patient will use defence mechanisms to avoid the painful feelings of his or her unconscious.
What is transference?
The patient unconsciously redirects feelings experienced in an important personal relationship toward the therapist.
What is humanistic therapy?
A psychological treatment based on the personality theories of Carl Rogers and other humanistic psychologists.
What is person-centred therapy?
An approach to treatment in which the client is helped to grow and develop as the therapist provides a comfortable, nonjudgemental environment.
What is a therapeutic alliance?
A relationship between the client and the therapist that is facilitated when the therapist is genuine, when the therapist treats the client with unconditional positive regard, and when the therapist develops empathy with the client.
What is cognitive behavioural therapy?
A structured approach to treatment that attempts to reduce psychological disorders through systematic procedures based on cognitive and behavioural principles.
It does not attempt to address the underlying issues that cause the problem.
What is behavioural therapy?
A psychological treatment that is based on principles of learning.
What is exposure therapy?
A behavioural therapy based on the classical conditioning principles of extinction, in which people are confronted with a feared stimulus with the goal of decreasing their negative emotional responses to it.
What is flooding?
A client being exposed to the source of his or her fears all at once. The therapist offers support throughout the process.
What is systematic desensitization?
A behavioural treatment that combines imagining or experiencing the feared object/stimulation with relaxation exercises.
The client and the therapist work together to prepare a hierarchy of fears, starting with the least frightening, and moving to the most frightening scenario surrounding the object or stimulus.
What principle do desensitization techniques use? Describe this principle.
Desensitization techniques use the principle of counterconditioning, in which a second incompatible response is conditioned to an already conditioned response.
