Psychological Therapies for Psychological Disorders

Psychological Therapies

• Treatments based upon psychological principles

Biomedical Therapies

• Treatments that focus on altering the brain with drugs, psychosurgery, or electro-convulsive therapy

Therapy

• It used to be that if someone exhibited abnormal behavior, they were institutionalized.

• Because of new drugs, and better therapy, the U.S went to a policy of deinstitutionalization

I. Psychoanalytic Therapy

• Freud's therapy
• Freud used free association, hypnosis, and dream interpretation to gain insight into the client's unconscious
• Modern methods include one on one interaction using free association

II. Humanistic Therapy

• Focuses on people's potential for self fulfillment (Self actualization)
• Focuses on the present and future (not the past)
• Focuses on conscious thoughts (not unconscious)
• Take responsibility for your actions instead of blaming childhood anxieties
• Can be broken down into two therapies:

Group Therapy

• A.A Meetings
• Self-Help Support Groups
• Sex offender support groups etc.
• Friends and families
• Support systems

Client (person) Centered Therapy

• Most widely used humanistic therapy
• Therapists should use genuineness, acceptance, and empathy to show unconditional positive regard toward their clients
• Developed by Carl Rogers

III. Behavioral Therapies

• Therapy that applies learning principles to the elimination of unwanted behaviors
• Behaviors are the problems- so we must change behaviors

Systematic Desensitization

• A type of countercontitioning that associates a pleasant relaxed state with gradually increasing anxiety-triggering stimuli

Exposure Therapy

• Form of desensitization
• The client directly confronts the anxiety-provoking stimulus

Aversive Conditioning Therapy

• A type of counterconditioning that associates an unpleasant state with an unwanted behavior

Operant Conditioning

• Token Economy: An operant conditioning procedure that rewards a desired behavior
• A patient exchanges a token of some sort, earned for exhibiting the desired behavior, for various privileges or treats

IV. Cognitive Therapy

• A therapy that teaches people new, more adaptive ways of thinking and acting; based on the assumptions that thoughts intervene between events and our emotional reactions.