Methods of Therapy

1. Methods of Therapy Abnormal Psychology Ms. Rebecca

2. Do Now: • What is one reason why you think someone would go to therapy? http://www.evolutionrevolutionnow.com/img/copy-of-therapist.jpg

3. Therapy • Methods of treating psychological problems and disorders. http://www.youthchg.com/poster67big.jpg

4. 2 categories of therapy: • 1. Psychological Methods • 2. Biological Methods

5. Goals of psychological methods (psychotherapy) • Fix the many thoughts, feelings, and/or behaviors that cause problems in peoples’ lives by talking with a professional. http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/funny-pictures-angry-cat-does-not-want-to-talk-about-it.jpg

6. Goals of biological therapy • Fix psychological problems by taking medicine or changing the physical nervous system or brain in some way (drugs, medical procedures/surgery). http://www.genital-warts-help.org/images/genital_warts_medicine.jpg

7. Psychotherapy • Goal: provide hope, new perspective and trust for fixing problems. Help self-esteem. http://tothewire.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/success1.jpg

8. Most common methods of psychotherapy • Psychoanalysis • Humanistic Therapy • Cognitive Therapy • Behavior Therapy • Check out table on page 437!

9. Psychoanalysis • Goals: Replace avoidance of things you don’t like with coping with them. Reduce inappropriate anxiety and guilty feelings. • Key Techniques: Free association; dream analysis; transference (transferring emotions about one person to your therapist)

10. Humanistic Therapy • Goals: Remove obstacles to self-actualization. (Figure out your goals in life and be able to reach them) • Key Techniques: active listening; unconditional positive regard

11. Cognitive Therapy • Goals: Replace self-defeating attitudes and beliefs with more rational, self-enhancing attitudes and beliefs. • Key Techniques: teach and encourage clients to challenge irrational beliefs and replace them with rational beliefs and attitudes.

12. Behavior Therapy • Goals: Replace maladaptive, self-defeating behavior with good, self-enhancing behavior. • Key Techniques: modeling, aversive conditioning, operant conditioning (train new behavior).

13. Types of Psychologists • Counseling Psychologist • Clinical Psychologist • Psychiatrist • Psychiatric Social Worker • Psychiatric Nurse

14. Other people who can help: • Teachers, guidance counselors, ministers or religious leaders, family doctors…. • Often, these are the people who are turned to first.

15. Types of Therapy • Individual vs. Group Therapy

16. Advantages of Individual Therapy • People get more personal attention. • People who feel more comfortable talking about their problems alone are more likely to be open with a therapist one-on-one. http://mingle2.com/images/blog/phases_dating/comfortable.jpg

17. Advantages of Group therapy • People can realize that they aren’t alone in having their problems. • People can learn how to deal with their problems by listening to how other people who had the same problems dealt with them. • People can practice social skills in a supportive environment. • People see that therapy CAN work when they see other members of the group recovering.

18. Types of Group Therapy • Couples Therapy: for marriage issues • Family Therapy: for all members of a family who love someone with a problem. • Self-help groups: therapy for people all facing the same problem. • Encounter groups: strangers who do not necessarily share common problems. They may just want to grow emotionally and become aware of their own feelings and the feelings of others.

19. Psychoanalytic Approach • Developed by Sigmund Freud. • Unconscious thoughts and feelings are the root of peoples’ problems. • Clients need to be helped to become aware of these unconscious thoughts and feelings to resolve the problems of their daily lives. • How? Free association, dream analysis, transference

20. Free Association • The psychoanalyst tells the client to relax and sat whatever comes to mind. Analyst doesn’t say much. • The idea is that if the client can say what is on their mind, eventually unconscious thoughts and feelings will come to the surface. http://www.cbruen.com/blog/talking_too_much.gif

21. How does it work? • Based on what the client says, or doesn’t say, the analyst interprets meaning. • Resistance: When a client won’t talk about certain issues during free association or makes jokes about certain issues it is thought that the reason is to repress or deny painful feelings.

22. Transference • Many clients start to see the relationship with their analyst as being similar to a relationship they have in real life. The client then begins to treat the analyst like they are that person. • Ex: Some people may see the analyst as being like their father or mother, they may treat the analyst like they would their father or mother. http://www.lee-knight.com/Main/images/cover_art/are_you_my_mother.jpg

23. Is transference good? • Some psychologists like transference because it helps clients to be comfortable expressing emotions about how they feel about a person.

24. Does Psychoanalysis help? • YES! • In a study of dozens of patients, People who received psychoanalysis showed improvement happened 70-75% more times than those that did not receive therapy.

25. When is Psychoanalysisespecially helpful? • For people with anxiety, mile depression, and difficulty with social relationships. http://www.cartoonstock.com/newscartoons/cartoonists/rma/lowres/rman2018l.jpg

26. When is psychoanalysis NOT very helpful? • For people with MAJOR Depression, bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia. • Other problems with psychoanalysis: clients need to meet many times/week to be effective and this can be time consuming AND expensive.

27. Humanistic Therapy • Goal: help individuals reach their full potential. • How: Become self-aware and accept yourself for who you are and what you want to do. • Therapists assume that people want to become all that they can be (Self Actualization).

28. What problems does Humanistic Therapy try to fix? • Helps people figure out what they can really do and helps them to reach their goals.

29. Most common type of Humanistic Therapy • Person Centered Therapy: • Idea: Problems happen when people stop being true to themselves and start acting how others want/expect them to act. • Therapy: is supposed to help clients find their true selves and realize their own unique potential.

30. How does Person Centered Therapy work? • Clients are seen as equals in a working relationship with their therapist instead of being seen as inferiors who are sick. • Clients are encouraged to lead the therapy session and talk about what is bothering them. Non-directive Therapy.

31. Non-directive Therapy • The therapist doesn’t lead. • Therapist’s role is to act as a mirror, reflecting back clients’ thoughts and feelings so clients can see themselves more clearly.

32. Techniques of person-centered therapy • Active Listening: The listener repeats, rephrases and asks for clarification of statements made by the speaker. • Goal: Show the speaker that they are being heard and understood.

33. Techniques of person-centered therapy • Listener is non-judgmental and supportive, regardless of what is being said. • This is called: unconditional positive regard. • This helps clients’ self esteem to rise and gives clients more confidence in the decisions they make. http://www.darton.edu/programs/bus_soc-sci/hst/images/hst1.jpg

34. Who uses person-centered therapy? • Person-centered therapy is used by school counselors a lot to help students deal with anxiety and to help them make decisions. • Ex: what college to go to.

35. Who does person-centered therapy help? • In a study, about 75% more people were helped after receiving person-centered therapy than those who received no therapy. • MOST useful for educated, motivated people. • Also helps people with anxiety, mild depression or problems with social relationships. • NOT HELPFUL for people with SERIOUS psychological problems.

36. Cognitive Therapy and Behavior Therapy • Goal: To help clients develop NEW ways of thinking and behaving. • Get rid of self-defeating thoughts (I’m not good at ANYTHING) and troubling behaviors (Smoking, lying etc).

37. Cognitive Therapy • Helps people to think about their problems in more productive ways.

38. Two most common cognitive/behavioral therapy methods: • 1. Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy • 2. Beck’s Cognitive Therapy

39. Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy • Based on the belief that people are basically logical in their thoughts and actions but the assumptions they base their thoughts or actions on are sometimes incorrect.

40. Example of a false assumption: “I MUST do EVERYTHING perfectly” • No one is perfect. People who believe that they have to do everything perfect to be happy also believe that if they are unhappy it is because they did something wrong. • No matter how hard you try you will never be able to live up to an unrealistically high standard of perfection.

41. Problem • People are often unaware of their false assumptions. • Therapy is supposed to help people identifyfalse assumptions and then challenge them. • Therapy teaches clients to think more realistically.

42. Techniques of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy: • 1. role playingandmodeling good, more realistic assumptions. • 2. Clients are given homework to do things like readings, and experiments to test assumptions. The more students do their homework in the “real” world, the more likely they are to be successful with their therapy.

43. Beck’s Cognitive Therapy • Beck’s Cognitive Therapy concentrates on restructuring thought processes that may lead to emotional problems like depression.

44. Behavior Therapy Goal: Help people to get rid of bad behaviors, like smoking or overeating AND/OR start doing good behavior, like eating right and exercising. OR helping people to get over a phobia.

45. Behavior Therapists Don’t care why someone does bad behavior. They just want to help that person to CHANGE bad behavior.

46. Behavioral Techniques Counter Conditioning Operant Conditioning

47. Counter-conditioning • Training people to NOT do an undesirable behavior • Replace bad behavior with better behavior.

48. Techniques of counter-conditioning • Systematic Desensitization • Modeling • Aversive conditioning

49. Systematic Desensitization • Client is trained to relax in an anxiety producing situation. • Ex: If someone has a fear of spiders they might be systematically desensitized to spiders by being told to relax over and over after they were told to think about spiders until they no longer had anxiety when they heard the word….

50. Modeling • Client observes and imitates someone else dealing with a feared object in a healthy way.