HPS121-T2-Ch16-Treating Psychological Disorders

Question 1

Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT):

Answer 1

a recently developed ‘third-wave’ behaviour therapy that focuses on mindfulness, accepting negative feelings and identifying core values.

Question 2

Aversion therapy:

Answer 2

a form of therapy in which a conditioned stimulus that currently evokes a positive but maladaptive response is paired with a noxious, unpleasant unconditioned stimulus, in an attempt to condition repulsion toward the conditioned stimulus.

Question 3

Behavioural activation:

Answer 3

a treatment for depression that engages clients life activities designed to increase positive reinforcement in their lives.

Question 4

Behaviour modification:

Answer 4

therapeutic procedures based on operant conditioning principles, such as positive reinforcement, operant extinction and punishment.

Question 5

Common factors:

Answer 5

therapeutic elements that are possessed by virtually any type of therapy and that may contribute to the similar positive effects shown by many different treatment approaches.

Question 6

Competency-focused prevention:

Answer 6

prevention programs that are designed to enhance personal resources needed to cope with situations that might otherwise cause psychological disorders.

Question 7

Counterconditioning:

Answer 7

the process of conditioning an incompatible response to a particular stimulus to eliminate a maladaptive response (e.g. anxiety), as occurs in systematic desensitisation.

Question 8

Cultural congruence:

Answer 8

the extent to which a form of treatment is consistent with the culture of a particular ethnic group.

Question 9

Culturally competent therapist:

Answer 9

practitioners who have a set of therapeutic skills, including scientific mindedness, the ability to consider both cultural and individual factors and the capacity to introduce culture-specific elements into therapy with people from diverse cultures.

Question 10

Deinstitutionalisation movement:

Answer 10

the attempt to move the primary locus of treatment from mental hospitals to the community.

Question 11

Dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT):

Answer 11

a recently developed cognitive- behavioural treatment for borderline personality disorder.

Question 12

Dodo bird verdict:

Answer 12

the conclusion reached by some psychotherapy researchers that virtually all treatment processes have similar success rates.

Question 13

Effect size:

Answer 13

in meta-analysis, a measure of treatment effectiveness that indicates what percentage of treated clients improve more than the average untreated client.

Question 14

Empathy:

Answer 14

the capacity for experiencing the same emotional response being exhibited by another person; in therapy, the ability of a therapist to view the world through the client’s eyes and to understand the clients emotions.

Question 15

Empirically supported treatments (ESTs):

Answer 15

psychotherapy and behaviour change techniques that have been shown to be efficacious in controlled clinical trials.

Question 16

Exposure:

Answer 16

a behaviour treatment therapy in which clients are presented, either in vivo or in their imagination, with fear-inducing stimuli, thus allowing extinctions to occur.

Question 17

Feminist therapy:

Answer 17

an orientation that focuses on women’s issues and strives to help female clients achieve greater self-determination.

Question 18

Free association:

Answer 18

in psychoanalysis, the procedure of verbalising all thoughts that come into consciousness without censorship.

Question 19

Genuineness:

Answer 19

the ability of a therapist to honestly express her or his feelings to a client.

Question 20

Insight:

Answer 20

in Gestalt psychology, the sudden perception of a useful relation or solution to a problem; in psychoanalysis, the conscious awareness of unconscious dynamics that underlie psychological problems.

Question 21

Interpersonal therapy:

Answer 21

a form of brief therapy that focuses on the client’s interpersonal problems and seeks to develop new interpersonal skills.

Question 22

Interpretation:

Answer 22

in psychoanalysis, a statement made by the analyst that is intended to promote insight in the client.

Question 23

Meta-analysis:

Answer 23

a statistical procedure for combining the results of different studies that examine the same topic.

Question 24

Mindfulness:

Answer 24

a mental state of awareness, focus, openness and acceptance of immediate experience.

Question 25

Openness:

Answer 25

the client’s willingness to become personally invested in the process of therapy that predicts favourable therapeutic outcomes.

Question 26

Placebo control group:

Answer 26

a control group that receives an intervention that is assumed to have no therapeutic value.

Question 27

Psychosurgery:

Answer 27

surgical procedures, such as lobotomy or cingulotomy, in which brain tissue involved in a behaviour disorder is removed or destroyed.

Question 28

Randomised clinical trial (RCT):

Answer 28

a treatment research design that involves the random assignment of clients having specific problems to an experimental (therapy) group or to a control condition so as to draw sound causal conclusions about the therapy’s efficacy.

Question 29

Resistance:

Answer 29

largely unconscious manoeuvres that protect clients from dealing with anxiety-arousing material in therapy.

Question 30

Response prevention:

Answer 30

the prevention of escape or avoidance responses during exposure to an anxiety arousing conditioned stimulus so that extinction can occur.

Question 31

Social skills training:

Answer 31

a technique in which a client learns more effective social behaviours by observing and imitating a skilful model.

Question 32

Specificity question:

Answer 32

the ultimate question of psychotherapy research: “Which types of therapy administered by which kinds of therapists to which kinds of clients having which kinds of problems produce which kinds of effects?”

Question 33

Stimulus hierarchy:

Answer 33

in systematic desensitisation, the creation of a series of anxiety arousing stimuli that are ranked in terms of the amount of anxiety they evoke.

Question 34

Systematic desensitisation:

Answer 34

a procedure used to eliminate anxiety using counter-conditioning, in which a new response is incompatible with anxiety is conditioned to the anxiety-arousing conditioned stimulus.

Question 35

Tardive Dyskinesia:

Answer 35

an irreversible motor disorder that can occur as a side effect of certain antipsychotic drugs.

Question 36

Token economy:

Answer 36

a procedure in which desirable behaviours are reinforced with tokens or points that can later be redeemed for other reinforcers.

Question 37

Transference:

Answer 37

the psychoanalytic phenomenon in which a client responds irrationally to the analyst as if the latter were an important person from the client’s past who plays a significant role in the client’s dynamics.

Question 38

Unconditional positive regard:

Answer 38

a communicated attitude of total and unconditional acceptance of another person that conveys the person’s intrinsic worth.

Question 39

Virtual reality (VR):

Answer 39

computer-produced virtual environments that immerse an individual and produce experiences similar to those of a corresponding real environment.