Test 4: Treatment of Psychological Disorders Flashcards
People fail to get treatment because…
- they may not realize that their disorder needs to be treated
- there may be barriers to treatment
- they may not know where to look for services
Approaches to treatment include:
- Psychotherapy (Psychodynamic, behavioral, cognitive, humanist, existential, family, couples, group)
- Biological (surgical, medical, drugs)
Psychotherapy
an interaction between a therapist and someone suffering from a psychological problem, with the goal of providing support or relief from the problem.
Eclectic psychotherapy
a form of psychotherapy that involves drawing on techniques from different forms of therapy, depending on the client and the problem
Psychodynamic psychotherapies
explore childhood events and encourage individuals to use this understanding to develop insight into their psychological problems
- Assumes that humans are born with urges that are suppressed through defense mechanisms.
- Goal is to bring repressed conflicts to consciousness to understand them and reduce their influence.
Free Association
the client reports every thought that enters the mind and the therapist looks for recurring themes.
Dream Analysis
the therapist looks for dream elements that symbolize unconscious conflicts of wishes
Interpretation
Psychoanalyst suggestion of why the client has these problems
Resistance
reluctance to cooperate with treatment for fear of confronting unpleasant unconscious material.
Behavioral
- Assumes that disordered behavior is learned
- Symptom relief is achieved through changing overt maladaptive behaviors into more constructive behaviors.
Goal of Behavioral Therapy:
- eliminate unwanted behaviors (by changing consequences)
- promote desired behaviors
- reduce unwanted emotional responses.
Behavioral self-monitoring
the simple acts of measuring one’s target behavior and comparing it to an external standard or goal can result in lasting improvements to that behavior
Token Economy
giving clients tokens for desired behaviors, which they can later trade for rewards
Skills Training
Social skills training (SST) is a form of behavior therapy used by teachers, therapists, and trainers to help persons who have difficulties relating to other people.
Exposure Therapy
confronting an emotion-arousing stimulus directly and repeatedly, ultimately leading to a decrease in the emotional response
Systematic Desensitation
is a behavioral technique whereby a person is gradually exposed to an anxiety-producing object, event or place, while being engaged in some type of relaxation at the same time in order to reduce the symptoms of anxiety.
-hierarchy of fear
Cognitive Therapy
involves helping a client identify and correct any distorted thinking about the self, others, and the world.
Cognitive Restructuring
- teaches clients to question the automatic beliefs, assumptions, and predictions that often lead to negative emotions and to replace negative thinking with more realistic and positive beliefs.
- Examine evidence for and against belief
- Increase acceptance of negative outcomes that may be undesirable but manageable
All or Nothing Thinking
You see things in black and white categories If a situation falls short of perfect, you see it as a total failure. When a young woman on a diet ate a spoonful of ice cream, she told herself, ‘I’ve blown my diet completely.’ This thought upset her so much that she gobbled down an entire quart of ice cream!
Overgeneralization
You see a single negative event, such as a romantic rejection or a career reversal as a never-ending pattern of defeat by using words such as ‘always’ or “never” when you think about it. A depressed salesman became terribly upset when he noticed bird dung on the windshield of his car. He told himself, ‘Just my luck! Birds are always crapping on my car!’
Mental Filter
You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively, so that your vision of all of reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that discolors a beaker of water. Example: You receive many positive comments about your presentation to a group of associates at work, but one of them says something mildly critical. You obsess about his reaction for days and ignore all the positive feedback.
Discounting the Positive
You reject positive experiences by insisting they ‘don’t count.’ If you do a good job, you may tell yourself that it wasn’t good enough or that anyone could have done as well. Discounting the positive takes the joy out of life and makes you feel inadequate and unrewarded.
Jumping to Conclusions
You interpret things negatively when there are no facts to support your conclusion.
Mind-reading
Without checking it out, you arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you.
Fortune-telling
You predict that things will turn out badly. Before a test you may tell yourself, ‘I’m really going to blow it. What if I flunk?’ If you’re depressed you may tell yourself, ‘I’ll never get better.
Magnification
You exaggerate the importance of your problems and shortcomings, or you minimize the importance of your desirable qualities.
