Psychotherapy: Types and Benefits

Psychotherapy Basics

• Psychotherapy is a treatment that assists individuals dealing with various mental health conditions and emotional issues.
• Research indicates that psychotherapy leads to symptom relief and improved life functioning for most recipients.
• Approximately 75% of people who undergo psychotherapy experience some degree of benefit.
• Psychotherapy enhances emotional and psychological well-being, fostering positive changes in both the brain and body.
• Further benefits include reduced sick days and disability, fewer medical issues, and heightened job satisfaction.
• Brain imaging shows that psychotherapy can cause brain changes similar to those resulting from medication.
• Common elements of psychotherapy include interpersonal relationships, verbal communication, expectation of improvement, therapist expertise, conceptual structures and specific procedures linked to rationale, and structure relationships.

Types of Psychotherapy

• Psychotherapy can be broken down into individual and non-individual therapies
• Individual consists of supportive, behavioural, cognitive behavioural, acceptance and commitment, psychoanalysis/psychodynamic, insight oriented/relationship and interpersonal
• Not individual consits of group, couple and family, social skills training.

Supportive Psychotherapy

• It is a common psychotherapy type used to help patients manage difficult situations, and can be integrated into other psychotherapy.
• Therapists show sympathy, interest, and concern, offering encouragement and advice.
• Therapists may suggest new hobbies or interests, social activities, independence from parents, or more organized study habits.
• Methods of supportive psychotherapy include confrontation, clarification, interpretation, rehearsal or guidance,rationalization and reframing, conversational style and praise, reassurance, encouragement, and advice.

Behavior Therapy

• Behaviorism studies observable behaviors, environmental influences, disregarding internal mental processes.
• It focuses on conditioning, reinforcement, and stimulus-response relationships.
• Ivan Pavlov introduced classical conditioning in 1849-1936.
• John B. Watson, the "father" of behaviorism, applied classical conditioning to research on a young child named "Albert" in 1878-1958.
• B.F. Skinner introduced operant reinforcement theory in 1904- 1958.
• Joseph Wolpe developed systematic desensitization in 1915-1977.
• Behavior Therapy focuses on overt observable behavior, emphasizing, "Focus in what the patient does."
• The main uses for behavior therapy are in autism, phobias, parenting, compulsive disorders, substance abuse and eating disorders.
• Relaxation techniques include deep breathing, yoga, music and meditation
• Relaxation techniques should be scheduled with dedicated time, performed in a relaxing environment, kept short and consistent, and integrated into daily activities
• The tecniques require set reminders and adjustment to your schedule and mindfulness.

Exposure Therapy

• Patients confront situations they typically avoid, to reduce adaptive difficulties from their disorder.
• This uses imaginal exposure takes place in the person's imagination
• In vivo exposure involves a real situation.
• Exposure with response prevention (ERP) is common in obsessive-compulsive disorder, this prevents the person from carrying out his or her usual behavioral response.
• Systematic desensitization is used for phobias, OCD, and sexual disorders.
• Hierarchy example involves clients working through relaxation while talking through anxiety causing stimuli.
• Therapeutic graded exposure can involve real life stimuli or stimulus presented with virtual reality.
• Flooding reinforces anxiety when the feared situation is escaped which is why patients are not allowed to do this.
• Recognition of exposure does not have to mean feared consequences
• Behavioural activation is for depressed patients.

Behavioral therapy

• Behavioral modification techniques use reinforcement in shaping behavior to reduce or eliminate undesirable behavior and replace it with healthier habits.
• These techniques are appropriate for disorders characterized by poor impluse control examples are; substance and eating disorders.
• Individual programs should suit the patient’s unique needs and stimuli reinforce healthy behaviors.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy(CBT)

• Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is based on the idea that cognition structures or schemas shape the way people react and adapt to various situations.
• CBT follows a format to structure the treatment and the session.
• CBT treatment is based on the history and focuses on current situation of origin of symptoms.
• CBT seeks to resolves current problems by creating a detailed plan to becomes treatment goal.
• CBT teaches patients to identify, label, and change dysfunctional thinking and behavior.
• There is more than 500 outcome studies demonstrating that CBT is effective
• CBT has been proven effective through double blind placebo controlled studies, in community settings, computer assisted interventions, geriatric and child adolescent.
• Arbitrary inference is drawing wrong conclusions.
• Selective abstraction is taking specific details and using it to denigrate.
• Overgeneralization is forming general conclusions based on experiences
• Personalization is interpreting events as reflection
• Dichotomous thinking is viewing things in an all or none matter.
• Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) promotes acceptance of what cannot be changed while encouraging a commitment to identified hopes, values, and goals.
• There are 6 principles of ACT which are: Acceptance- creating space for emotions impulses and feelings that might otherwise be suppressed or avoided. Cognitive Defusion- Recognizing our psychological experiences objectively rather than perceiving them as threats/realities. Being Present- Fostering an awareness of how we're currently feeling both physically and mentally. Self and Content- Viewing our psychological/physical experiences as transient and ever changing. Values Clarification- clarifying things that we hold personally meaningful. Committed Action- Goal setting.
• Disorders successfully treated by CBT are; psychiatric, psychological and medical (with psychological components).

Psychodynamic Therapy

• Psychodynamic therapy combines parts of different types of analytic therapies.
• It is based on the idea that individual's unconscious thoughts and perceptions are developed throughout their childhood.
• These unconscious thoughts affect behaviours.
• Psychodynamic therapy is often used for depression, anxiety, phobia and pain
• Process of psychodynamic therapy involves a building relationships, working rhough interpretations, transference to resolution
• The techniques for psychodynamic therapy are; resistance analysis, free association, interpretation, transference and dream analysis.

Insight Oriented and Relationship Psychotherapy

• Insight-oriented psychotherapy focuses on interpersonal relationships and here-and-now situations.
• Relationship therapy stresses the importance of a corrective emotional experience with a therapist.
• Insight therapy see’s patients once a week for 50 minutes, where they review and discuss relationships, attitudes, and early life experiences to achieve insights.
• During relationship therapy, the therapist assumes a more active role, patients are seen once weekly with therapy lasting between 6 months- years.
• The content of the sessions focus primarily on current situations and relationships with reflection on early life experiences.
• The most important component of relationship psychotherapy is the empathic and caring attitude of the therapist.

Interpersonal Therapy

• Interpersonal Therapy stresses that conflicts can be expressed in problems and relationships, as IPT focuses on improving interpersonal relationships.
• Interpersonal Therapy focus on on is; Major Depression, Bulimia, Borderline PD. Focused in the present. General domains being; grief, interpersonal disputes and interpersonal deficits.

Group therapy

• It is an efficient way to treat a large number of patients, with different kinds of group therapy.
• Group therapy is establish din inpatient and outpatient psychiatric hospitals.
• Patients share problems in order to diminish isolation and loneliness.
• The therapeutic mechanisms include altruism, corrective recapitulation, group cohesivenessm and universality
• Group members learn through feedback how there behavior is affecting others.

Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT)

• Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is a modified type of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), teach people to live in the moment, cope with stress, regulate emotions, and improve interpersonal relationships.
• Basics of DBT include individual therapy, group therapy, coaching on demand and therapist consultation
• It can used for anxiety, addictions, depression, PTSD, bipolar disorder, suicidal self harm, borderline and compulsive personality dissorders and eating disorders
• The main skills acquired from DBT are mindfulness, distress tolerance, interpersonal effectiveness and emotional regulation

Couples Therapy

• Involves two people to stabilise and improve their relationship
• The purpose is to have willing and cooperative partners to seek change.
• Therapists need to be fair, neutral and impartial.
• Couples therapy usually identifies specific problems, each partner will identify changes, therapist help with gradual graded steps.

Family Therapy

• Family therapy focuses on the larger family unit such as; single parent and the child and more but typically both parents and the child (or a parent and stepparent, two separated parents, other parental pairings depending on the family environment in which the child lives), or one or more parents and the child plus siblings.
• Therapists should also help families where at least one member serious mental illness. Work with medical model and provide empathy for the family member and their family.

Social skills training

• Is initiated on an inpatient basis due the long term assistence goal.
• Social skills are important for; love life, school, sports, the workplace, home, meeting new people and friendships.
• Types of social skills are; interpersonal, empathy, problem solving and communication.
• These skills are improved by; not intrerrupting others, getting some form of self care, listen to to people, having a one-on-one conversations, not being negative, listening to peoples stories and remembering there name, creating daily routines, maintain eye contact, watching other behaviors, starting slowly and asking questions.