Lecture 7: Therapies for Psychological Disorders

Question 1

Modern clinical psychology is both…

Answer 1

academic and applied

Question 2

What is a psychological disorder?

Answer 2

Is a clinically significant disturbance in an individual’s cognition, emotional regulation or behaviour that is usually associated with significant distress or disability in social, occupational or other important activities

Question 2

What is a clinical assessment for mental disorders?

Answer 2

A procedure for gathering information that is needed to evaluate an individual’s psychological

Question 3

what are the common components of a clinical assessment

Answer 3

• clinical interview
• self-report measures
  -projective tests

Question 4

What is a clinical interview?

Answer 4

• may be unstructured or structured; ask the client to describe their problems and concerns
• after collecting information from the client, the clinician may have an idea of whether the client is managing a psychological disorder

Question 5

What are self-report measures?

Answer 5

Self-report measures are reliable tools that can indicate the severity of a client’s symptoms and consist of set questions the client answers; results must be interpreted keeping in mind the client’s history.

Question 6

What are projective tests?

Answer 6

Projective tests allow a client to impose structure on an ambiguous image, and the clinician can gather hidden thoughts and motivations - unconscious (not the most reliable tools)

Question 7

Trephination

Answer 7

Is a surgical procedure in which a hole is drilled into the skull, often to reduce pressure within the skull

Question 8

in the past, well-meaning physicians would cause harm to their patients to…

Answer 8

Cure them, to drive out the evil spirits causing the mental illness - ex: trephination was used as a means of driving out demons

Question 9

Philippe Pinel

Answer 9

pressured the French government to stop barbaric practices in Paris hospitals and developed a more humane method (moral treatment) of providing therapy to psychiatric patients

Question 10

Dorothea Dix

Answer 10

championed the cause of mistreated people with mental illness

Question 11

2 types of modern therapies

Answer 11

1. psychological therapies
2. biological therapies

Question 12

What makes a good therapist?

Answer 12

Who they are, what they do and how well they match their client’s needs… not how qualified they are