clinical applications Flashcards
what is psychotherapy?
systematic efforts to apply psychosocial intervention to reduce distress or maladaptive behavior or enhance adaptive functioning.
in a given year in the united states, approximately how much of the population meets criteria for one or more psychiatric disorders?
25%.
over the course of a lifetime, approximately how much of the population meets criteria for at least one disorder?
50%.
in the united states, approximately how much of individuals with a diagnosable mental disorder are not receiving treatment of any kind?
- 70%
- this is also higher for minority groups, specially african americans and hispanics
how much does alcoholism and substance use cost the U.S. each year?
approximately $500 billion.
how many people in the U.S. have alcoholism or a substance use disorder?
over 20 million americans.
how much do anxiety disorders cost the U.S. each year?
approximately $42 billion.
why are advocacy numbers important?
for governmental funding as it is often necessary to provide data to show the seriousness of the issue.
what do changing definitions overtime do?
they can influence the prevalence/how much a disorder seems to appear.
why was there dissatisfaction with traditional treatment (psychoanalysis)?
methods often required people to go to therapy for their entire lives because they were ineffective.
where did psychoanalysis come from?
freud, but he was not a researcher.
what was the view of traditional treatments (psychoanalysis)?
psychological problems emerged in relationships (e.g., parent, family) and that those problems had to be resolved in a very special relationship in the context of therapy.
why did many people use traditional treatments (psychoanalysis)?
people went because at the time, having a psychoanalysis was seen as a status symbol.
research indicated that approximately of children, adolescents, and adults who received therapy improved by the end of treatment?
about two-thirds.
although two-thirds of children, adolescents, and adults who received therapy improved by the end of treatment, about how many improved with no treatment?
also about two-thirds.
behaviorism was an effort to what?
bring all topics toward a more scientific and objective approach.
what was much of behaviorism work based off of?
the work of pavlov and conditioning.
the learning based approach seems more what?
more rational for a basis of treatment compared to traditional methods.
what does the learning based approach state?
people behave the way they do because they learned that behavior.
what tended to emerge because of a more objective, behavioral, and learning-based approach?
animal laboratory research on operant conditioning (e.g., how do animals respond to various reinforcement contingencies?).
what did wolpe do?
- said that we can treat anxiety disorders by using extinction
- however, he knew that extinction was hard, so he said we have to be smart about it
- what can a person tolerate in extinction?
- start with the easiest behavior a person wants to do and then increase it
by the 1970s intervention techniques had been applied in what?
schools (elementary through college), business and industry, the home, the military, and community settings and for an endless set of target behaviors (e.g., academics, socialization, exercise, nutrition, conservation, work and medical safety practices).
what is a cognitive process?
an array of mental events (self-statements, thoughts, perceptions, beliefs, expectations, and attributions).
how the environment is perceived and cognitively processed can greatly influence what?
- the impact of environmental events
- ex: two persons riding a roller coaster may react quite differently, in part because of the different ways in which they perceive the experience
what is stimulus-response (S-R) learning?
- stimuli is referred to environmental events outside of the individual and responses are referred to what the organism (e.g., laboratory animal) actually did in the experiment
- learning takes place by pairing stimuli (e.g., classical conditioning) or various behaviors and consequences (e.g., operant conditioning)
what is stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R)?
one could better explain learning by considering internal processes in addition to environmental cues.
what are the four paradigms for studying learning?
- classical conditioning
- operant conditioning
- observational learning (modeling)
- rational behaviorism
cognitive processes have been shown to relate to or from a central part of what?
a number of clinical disorders, including depression, schizophrenia, and anxiety.
what are cognitively based techniques?
a family of procedures that are distinguished by adherence to one or both of these propositions: (1) maladaptive, distorted, or deficient cognitions underlie the clinical problem that is being treated; and (2) cognitive processes are central to therapeutic change independently of the underpinnings of the clinical problem.
most cognitively based techniques are applied in the context of what?
psychotherapy sessions in which children, adolescents, or adults are seen individually or in a group by professional therapists.
what is mindfulness?
an awareness of one’s current experience, including bodily functions, consciousness, and other aspects of the moment.
what is mindfulness mainly used for?
anxiety and stress management.
where did mindfulness come from?
buddhist meditation.
acceptance complements what?
- mindfulness
- emphasizes accepting and embracing one’s private thoughts and experiences
what is acceptance and commitment therapy?
the treatment assumes that much of psychological suffering stems from avoiding experience, maladaptive cognitions, and psychological rigidity.
what does acceptance and commitment therapy include?
attention to current experience (mindfulness, acceptance) and strategies to change behaviors and cognitions (cognitive-behavioral strategies).
