Treating Psychological Disorders

Question 1

psychological assessment

Answer 1

an evaluation of the patient’s psychological and mental health

Question 2

psychotherapy

Answer 2

the professional treatment for psychological disorder through techniques designed to encourage communication of conflicts and insight

fundamental aspect of psychotherapy is that the patient directly confronts the disorder and works with the therapist to help reduce it

Question 3

Psychodynamic therapy (psychoanalysis)

Answer 3

a psychological treatment based on Freudian and neo-Freudian personality theories in which the therapist helps the patient explore the unconscious dynamics of personality

goal of the psychotherapy is for the patient to talk about his or her personal concerns and anxieties, allowing the therapist to try to understand the underlying unconscious problems that are causing the symptoms

Question 4

process of interpretation

Answer 4

allowing the therapist to try to understand the underlying unconscious problems that are causing the symptoms

therapist uses the patient’s expressed thoughts to try to understand the underlying unconscious problems. The analyst may try out some interpretations on the patient and observe how he or she responds to them

Question 5

free association

Answer 5

therapist listens while the client talks about whatever comes to mind, without any censorship or filtering

therapist then tries to interpret these free associations, looking for unconscious causes of symptoms

Question 6

dream analysis

Answer 6

analyze the symbolism of the dreams in an effort to probe the unconscious thoughts of the client and interpret their significance

Question 7

insight

Answer 7

an understanding of the unconscious causes of the disorder

Question 8

resistance

Answer 8

using defense mechanisms to avoid the painful feelings in his or her unconscious

Question 9

transference

Answer 9

the patient unconsciously redirects feelings experienced in an important personal relationship toward the therapist

Question 10

humanistic therapy

Answer 10

a psychological treatment based on the personality theories of Carl Rogers and other humanistic psychologists

based on the idea that people develop psychological problems when they are burdened by limits and expectations placed on them by themselves and others, and the treatment emphasizes the person’s capacity for self-realization and fulfillment

attempt to promote growth and responsibility by helping clients consider their own situations and the world around them and how they can work to achieve their life goals

Question 11

person-centered therapy (or client-centered therapy)

Answer 11

an approach to treatment in which the client is helped to grow and develop as the therapist provides a comfortable, nonjudgmental environment

Question 12

therapeutic alliance

Answer 12

a relationship between the client and the therapist that is facilitated when the therapist is genuine (i.e., he or she creates no barriers to free-flowing thoughts and feelings), when the therapist treats the client with unconditional positive regard (i.e., values the client without any qualifications, displaying an accepting attitude toward whatever the client is feeling at the moment), and when the therapist develops empathy with the client (i.e., that he or she actively listens to and accurately perceives the personal feelings that the client experiences)

Question 13

Cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT)

Answer 13

a structured approach to treatment that attempts to reduce psychological disorders through systematic procedures based on cognitive and behavioral principles

based on the idea that there is a recursive link among our thoughts, our feelings, and our behavior

CBT treats the symptoms of the disorder (the behaviors or the cognitions) and does not attempt to address the underlying issues that cause the problem. The goal is simply to stop the negative cycle by intervening to change cognition or behavior.

Question 14

Behavioral therapy

Answer 14

psychological treatment that is based on principles of learning

direct approach is through operant conditioning using reward or punishment

Question 15

Exposure therapy

Answer 15

a behavioral therapy based on the classical conditioning principle of extinction, in which people are confronted with a feared stimulus with the goal of decreasing their negative emotional responses to it

Question 16

flooding

Answer 16

client is exposed to the source of his fear all at once

Question 17

Systematic desensitization

Answer 17

a behavioral treatment that combines imagining or experiencing the feared object or situation with relaxation exercises

Question 18

counterconditioning

Answer 18

a second incompatible response (relaxation, e.g., through deep breathing) is conditioned to an already conditioned response (the fear response).

Question 19

Aversion therapy

Answer 19

a type of behavior therapy in which positive punishment is used to reduce the frequency of an undesirable behavior

An unpleasant stimulus is intentionally paired with a harmful or socially unacceptable behavior until the behavior becomes associated with unpleasant sensations and is hopefully reduced

Question 20

cognitive therapy

Answer 20

a psychological treatment that helps clients identify incorrect or distorted beliefs that are contributing to disorder

changing thoughts will change emotions, and that the new emotions will then influence behavior

Aaron T. Beck and the psychologist Albert Ellis

Question 21

rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT) or rational emotive therapy (RET)

Answer 21

focused on pointing out the flaws in the patient’s thinking. Ellis noticed that people experiencing strong negative emotions tend to personalize and overgeneralize their beliefs, leading to an inability to see situations accurately

therapist’s goal is to challenge these irrational thought patterns, helping the patient replace the irrational thoughts with more rational ones, leading to the development of more appropriate emotional reactions and behaviors

develop a short-term therapy for depression that would modify these unproductive thoughts

challenges the client to test his beliefs against concrete evidence

Question 22

eclectic therapy

Answer 22

an approach to treatment in which the therapist uses whichever techniques seem most useful and relevant for a given patient

most common form of therapy used

Question 23

dialectical behavioral therapy

Answer 23

example of an eclectic treatment approach that has been shown to be successful in treating BPD

essentially a cognitive therapy, but it includes a particular emphasis on attempting to enlist the help of the patient in his or her own treatment

Question 24

Biomedical therapies

Answer 24

treatments designed to reduce psychological disorder by influencing the action of the central nervous system

Question 25

psychostimulants

Answer 25

for ADHD; Ritalin, Adderall, and Dexedrine

Question 26

Antidepressant medications

Answer 26

drugs designed to improve moods

work by influencing the production and reuptake of neurotransmitters that relate to emotion, including serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine

Question 27

tricyclic antidepressants and monamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs)

Answer 27

work by increasing the amount of serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine at the synapses, but they also have severe side effects including potential increases in blood pressure and the need to follow particular diets

Question 28

selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs)

Answer 28

Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft, which are designed to selectively block the reuptake of serotonin at the synapse, thereby leaving more serotonin available in the CNS. SSRIs are safer and have fewer side effects than the tricyclics or the MAOIs

Question 29

mood stabilizing medications

Answer 29

lithium carbonate (or “lithium”), was approved by the FDA in the 1970s for treating both manic and depressive episodes, and it has proven very effective

Potential negative side effects of lithium are loss of coordination, slurred speech, frequent urination, and excessive thirst

Question 30

Antianxiety medications

Answer 30

drugs that help relieve fear or anxiety

work by increasing the action of the neurotransmitter GABA. The increased level of GABA helps inhibit the action of the sympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system, creating a calming experience

Question 31

tranquilizers, known as benzodiazepines

Answer 31

most common class of antianxiety medications;

Question 32

Antipsychotic drugs (neuroleptics)

Answer 32

drugs that treat the symptoms of schizophrenia and related psychotic disorders

reduce the positive symptoms of schizophrenia by reducing the transmission of dopamine at the synapses in the limbic system, and they improve negative symptoms by influencing levels of serotonin

can cause tardive dyskinesia that causes uncontrollable muscle movements, usually in the mouth area

Question 33

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT)

Answer 33

a medical procedure designed to alleviate psychological disorder in which electric currents are passed through the brain, deliberately triggering a brief seizure

used to treat sever depresion

Question 34

transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)

Answer 34

a medical procedure designed to reduce psychological disorder that uses a pulsing magnetic coil to electrically stimulate the brain

Question 35

Psychosurgery

Answer 35

surgery that removes or destroys brain tissue in the hope of improving disorder,

for most sever cases

Question 36

prefrontal lobotomy

Answer 36

destroys the connections between the prefrontal cortex and the rest of the brain

Question 37

Group therapy

Answer 37

psychotherapy in which clients receive psychological treatment together with others.

Question 38

Primary prevention

Answer 38

prevention in which all members of the community receive the treatment

Question 39

Secondary prevention

Answer 39

more limited and focuses on people who are most likely to need it—those who display risk factors for a given disorder

Question 40

Implicit Association Test (IAT)

Answer 40

designed to assess the strength of a person’s mental associations between death and the self

participants classified stimuli representing the constructs of “death” (i.e., die, dead, deceased, lifeless, and suicide) and “life” (i.e., alive, survive, live, thrive, and breathing) and the attributes of “me” (i.e., I, myself, my, mine, and self) and “not me” (i.e., they, them, their, theirs, and other)

Question 41

community health service programs

Answer 41

act during childhood or early adolescence with the hope that interventions might prevent disorders from appearing or keep existing disorders from expanding. The prevention provided can be primary, secondary, or tertiary

Question 42

tertiary prevention

Answer 42

such as psychotherapy or biomedical therapy, that focuses on people who are already diagnosed with disorder

Question 43

outcome research

Answer 43

studies that assess the effectiveness of medical treatments, used to determine the effectiveness of different therapies

the independent variable is the type of the treatment

dependent measure is an assessment of the benefit received by the client

Question 44

Nonspecific treatment effects

Answer 44

occur when the patient gets better over time simply by coming to therapy, even though it doesn’t matter what actually happens at the therapy sessions

Question 45

meta-analysis for effectiveness of therapy

Answer 45

a statistical technique that uses the results of existing studies to integrate and draw conclusions about those studies

found that the average effect size for the influence of therapy was 0.85, indicating that psychotherapy had a relatively large positive effect on recovery. What this means is that, overall, receiving psychotherapy for behavioral problems is substantially better for the individual than not receiving therapy

a good part of the effect of therapy is nonspecific, in the sense that simply coming to any type of therapy is helpful in comparison to not coming

community interventions can be effective in preventing a variety of psychological disorders

Question 46

effect size

Answer 46

a measure of the effectiveness of treatment

Question 47

empirically supported therapies

Answer 47

cognitive therapy and behavioral therapy for depression; cognitive therapy, exposure therapy, and stress inoculation training for anxiety; CBT for bulimia; and behavior modification for bed-wetting