Psychotherapy & Defense Mechanisms Flashcards
How does medication compare to cognitive therapy in the treatment of moderate-severe depression?
The positive response to medication and cognitive therapy is the same; however, in long term studies cognitive therapy demonstrates greater improvement.
- Relapse increases with medications in the long term
What is the correlation between counseling and neuroimaging?
When applied to mental illness, change in symptoms corresponds to changes in brain function as measured by various neuroimaging paradigms
What are the advantages of cognitive therapy?
1) Improve problem solving
- Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex
2) Improve perspective on self and others
- ventral anterior cingulate cortex, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, precuneus
3) Assist with regulating distressing affective states
- Insular cortex, amygdala, ventral ant cig cortex, dorsal ant cing cortex, dl prefrontal cortex and vl prefrontal cortex, ventral and dorsal medial prefrontal cortex
What are the (4) main aspects of a psychological assessment?
1) Cognition: intelligence, learning, attribution of meaning
2) Emotion/affect: feeling state
3) Motivation: goals, wishes, desires, drives
4) Behaviors: Observable actions
What are the primary methods in psychotherapy?
Creating cognitive linkages:
1) Linking thoughts, emotions, behaviors, physical symptoms
2) Linking past to present
3) Linking patient to others
4) Linking patient to higher meaning
What does supportive therapy focus on?
- Focus on education, strengthening existing adaptive behaviors, advice*
- Supportive therapy/ coping strategies
- Crisis intervention (i.e. problem solving)
- Mutual self help
What does expressive psychotherapy focus on?
- Involves developing insight or better understanding of meaning of current behavior, symptoms, situation
- Exploration of unconscious thoughts & feelings
- Psychoanalysis
- Psychodynamic psychotherapy
- Insight-oriented psychotherapy
What do psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic therapy focus on?
- Involves concepts of the unconscious, conflicts and transference
- Involves concept of psychological defenses
Define defenses.
Mostly automatic mechanisms that help people maintain emotional equilibrium
Define sublimation.
Changes an unacceptable wish into one that is socially acceptable
- ie “I want to hit my father, but instead I play rugby”
Define displacement.
Transfers the problematic feeling or impulse from its original context to a substitute that carries less intensity
- ie kicking the dog
Define reaction formation.
Deals with an unacceptable thought or feeling by substituting its opposite.
- i.e. treating someone you strongly dislike in an excessively friendly manner in order to hide your true feelings.
What is behavior therapy?
Focus on changing behavior rather than understanding the problem
- can be used in the treatment of most mood, anxiety, psychotic and substance use disorders - based on operant conditioning (reward) and classical conditioning (conditioned response)
What are the methods of behavior therapy?
- relaxation training
- social skills training
- exposure with or without response prevention
- contingency management
What is cognitive therapy?
Focus on changing cognitions (patterns of thinking) that contribute to the problem
- Used in many mental illnesses
- Uses linkages between behaviors, cognitions, and emotions
What is the basic premise of cognitive therapy?
Automatic thoughts, which are distorted or dysfunctional, are related to dysfunctional behaviors and uncomfortable emotions.
- Modification of thoughts will lead to changes in behavior and emotion => patients are taught to recognize these thoughts and change
- Key is the patient monitors their cognitions/behaviors
What are the ABCs of CBT?
A: actual event or antecedent
B: automatic thought (or problem behavior)
C: consequences
- CBT offers the option to think and act differently
How does the brain change in reaction to CBT?
- Decreased amygdala activity
- Increased prefrontal control
What are common dysfunctional styles of thinking?
- All or none thinking
- Overgeneralization
- Evaluative statement “Must, never, should”
- Catastrophizing/ Fortune telling
- Emotional reasoning
- Labeling
What are ways of challenging automatic thoughts?
- Identify the distortion
- Examine the evidence
- Thinking in shades of grey
- The double standard method
- The experimental technique
- The semantic method
- Define your terms
- The survey method
- The cost benefit analysis
