General Psychology Chapter 16: Therapies

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General PsychologyChapter 16 Therapies
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Insight Therapies

• Psychodynamic therapies
• Therapies that attempt to uncover childhood
  experiences that explain a patients current
  difficulties
• Psychoanalysis
• Freuds method of psychotherapy uses free
  association, dream analysis, and transference

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• Humanistic therapies
• Person-centered therapy
• A nondirective, humanistic therapy in which the
  therapist creates a warm, accepting climate,
  freeing clients to be themselves and releasing
  their natural tendency toward positive growth
  developed by Carl Rogers

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• Gestalt therapy
• A therapy that was originated by Fritz Perls and
  that emphasizes that importance of clients fully
  experiencing, in the present moment, their
  feelings, thoughts, and actions and taking
  personal responsibility for their behavior
• The goal of Gestalt therapy is to help clients
  achieve a more integrated self and become more
  authentic and self-accepting

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Relationship Therapies

• Interpersonal therapy (IPT)
• A brief psychotherapy designed to help depressed
  people better understand and cope with problems
  relating to their interpersonal relationships

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• Couple and family therapy
• Family therapy
• Therapy involving an entire family, based on the
  assumption that an individuals problem is caused
  and/or maintained in part by problems within the
  family unit

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• Group therapy
• Learning that others also share their problems
  leaves people feeling less alone and ashamed

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Behavior Therapies

• Behavior modification
• The systematic application of learning principles
  to help a person eliminate undesirable behaviors
  and/or acquire more adaptive behaviors also
  called behavior therapy

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• Token economies
• A behavior modification technique that reinforces
  desirable behaviors with tokens that can be
  exchanged later for desired objects, activities,
  and/or privileges

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• Therapies based on classical conditioning
• Systematic desensitization
• A behavior therapy that is used to treat phobias
  and that involves training clients in deep muscle
  relaxation and then having them confront a
  graduated series of anxiety-producing situations
  until they can remain relaxed while confronting
  even the most feared situation

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• Flooding
• A behavioral therapy used to treat phobias,
  during which clients are exposed to the feared
  object or event for an extended period until
  their anxiety decreases
• In vivo flooding, the real-life experience, works
  faster and is more effective than simply
  imagining the feared object

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• Exposure and response prevention
• A behavior therapy that exposes patients with
  obsessive compulsive disorder or PTSD to stimuli
  generating increasing anxiety patients must
  agree not to carry out their normal rituals for a
  specified period of time after exposure

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• Aversion therapy
• A behavior therapy in which an aversive stimulus
  is paired with an undesirable behavior until the
  behavior becomes associated with pain and
  discomfort
• electric shock, induced vomiting, bitter taste

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• Participant modeling
• A behavior therapy in which an appropriate
  response is modeled in graduated steps and the
  client attempts each step, encouraged and
  supported by the therapist

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Cognitive Therapies

• Cognitive therapies
• Therapies that assume faulty thinking is the
  basis of most psychological difficulties

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• Rational-emotive therapy
• A confrontational therapy developed by Albert
  Ellis and designed to challenge and modify the
  irrational beliefs thought to cause personal
  distress
• Rational-emotive therapy is based on Elliss ABC
  theory
• The A refers to the activating event, the B to
  the persons belief about the event, and the C to
  the emotional consequence that follows

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• Cognitive therapy
• Aaron T. Beck claims that much of the misery
  endured by a depressed and anxious person can be
  traced to automatic thoughts unreasonable but
  unquestioned ideas that rule the persons life
• Cognitive therapy
• A therapy designed to change maladaptive behavior
  by changing the persons irrational thoughts,
  beliefs, and ideas

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Biological Therapies

• Drug therapy
• Antipsychotics
• Drugs used to control severe psychotic symptoms,
  such as the delusions and hallucinations of
  schizophrenics also known as neuroleptics or
  major tranquilizers
• The long-term use of typical antipsychotic drugs
  carries a high risk of the most severe side
  effect, tardive dyskinesiaalmost continual
  twitching and jerking movements of the face and
  tongue, and squirming movements of the hands and
  trunk

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• Newer antipsychotic drugs called atypical
  neuroleptics can treat not only the positive
  symptoms of schizophrenia but the negative
  symptoms as well, leading to marked improvement
  in patients quality of life
• Antidepressants
• The first were the tricyclics which work against
  depression by blocking the reuptake of
  norepinephrine and serotonin into the axon
  terminals, thus enhancing the action of these
  neurotransmitters in the synapses

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• The second-generation antidepressants, the
  selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs),
  block the reuptake of the neurotransmitter
  serotonin, increasing its availability at the
  synapses in the brain
• SSRIs have fewer side effects and are safer in
  overdose than tricyclics

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• Another line of treatment for depression is the
  monoamine oxidase (MAO) inhibitors
• By blocking the action of an enzyme that breaks
  down norepinephrine and serotonin in the
  synapses, MAO inhibitors increase the
  availability of norepinephrine and serotonin
• Lithium and divalproex
• Lithium
• A drug used in bipolar disorder to control the
  symptoms in a manic episode and to even out the
  mood swings and reduce recurrence of future manic
  depressive states

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• Considered a wonder drug for 40 50 of patients
  suffering from bipolar disorder
• A proper maintenance dose of lithium yields
  reductions in depressive episodes as well as
  manic ones
• Recent research suggests that anticonvulsant
  drugs, such as Depakote, may be just as effective
  for managing bipolar symptoms as lithium with
  fewer side effects

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• Tranquilizers
• The family of minor tranquilizers called
  benzodiazepines includes, among others, the
  well-known drugs sold as Valium and Librium and
  the newer high-potency drug Xanax
• Used primarily to treat anxiety, benzodiazepines
  are prescribed more often than any other class of
  psychoactive drugs
• They have been found to be an effective treatment
  for panic disorder and generalized anxiety
  disorder

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• Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT)
• A treatment in which an electric current is
  passed through the brain, causing a seizure
  usually reserved for severely depressed patients
  who are either suicidal or unresponsive to other
  treatment
• Today electric current is administered to the
  right hemisphere only, and the procedure is
  called unilateral ECT

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Evaluating the Therapies

• Smith, Glass, and Miller
• Reanalyzed the results of 475 studies, which
  involved 25,000 patients
• Revealed that psychotherapy was better than no
  treatment, but no one type of therapy was more
  effective than another