Discussion #11 – Treatment of Psychological Disorders

Discussion #11 – Treatment of Psychological Disorders

Discussion #11, posting due 7/26 – Treatment of Psychological Disorders

This week we will cover Chapter 14: Treatment of Psychological Disorders We sort of touched on it a bit last week when we talked about the disorders themselves, but this week we’ll focus on both drug and talk therapies for various disorders. It’s important to note that treatment is not a one-size-fits-all kind of thing. A couple of pieces of advice that you did not ask for, but that you should consider:

· If you go to a therapist, and it doesn’t seem to be working for you, CHANGE therapists. They will not feel abandoned! They know their treatment style doesn’t work with everyone. 

· If you try a drug treatment, GIVE IT SOME TIME. It takes time for brain chemistry to adapt and change. You got to give it a chance to work (even up to a month). And never go cold turkey off your meds! It can have devastating effects because your brain chemistry is altered. 

We will cover most of the chapter here, including the following sections of the textbook:

· An introduction to treatment

· Treatment today: An overview of the major approaches

· Insight therapies: psychoanalysis, humanistic, person-centered

· Behavior therapies: exposure, systematic desensitization, aversion therapies, learning

· Cognitive therapies: Beck’s cognitive therapy

· Biomedical therapies: psychopharmacology, other biomed treatments

· Psychotherapy

Useful infographics/tables:

· Infographic 14.1 Major Approaches to Therapy

· Infographic 14.2 Classical Conditioning in Behavior Therapies

· Infographic 14.3 Biomedical therapies

· Table 14.4: Medications for psychological disorders

Websites that may be useful / interesting: 

· American Psychiatric Association (Links to an external site.)

· National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (Links to an external site.), call 988

· The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) (Links to an external site.)

An introduction to treatment

The questions of who gets treated, who pays for it, and how it’s done are ones that have been debated and researched a ton (how’s that for scientific speak?). We talked about mental health stigma last week. That is only one barrier to seeking therapy. Another barrier is $$ – as always – who pays for it? If a person does not have insurance and they can’t afford treatment, what then? If their mental illness is severe, they can end up being a danger to themselves or others and/or end up homeless. I hope that you understand now that people cannot just “get over it” and they do not “just grow out of it”, with the “it” being mental illness. People with severe, and even mild, forms of mental illness benefit tremendously from treatment – including talk therapy and/or drug therapy.

Your text talks about the sad history of treating those with mental disorders, including the deinstitutionalization (Links to an external site.) movement, which sounded like a good idea in theory, but led to different issues to contend with when helping those with mental illness. 

Treatment today: An overview of the major approaches

Today, psychological therapy comes in many forms. Your text gives a good overview in Infographic 14.1 Major Approaches to Therapy and a quick google image search for Major Approaches to Therapy (Links to an external site.) will reveal some of the same components. Essentially, you have:

· Individual therapy

· Biomedical

· Psychopharmacology (i.e. drugs)

· Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT)

· Neurosurgery (i.e., create lesions / lobotomies)

· Psychological

· Behavioral therapies (focus on behavioral changes)

· Exposure / systematic desensitization

· Aversion therapies

· Learning / classical conditioning

· Insight therapies (focuses on increasing awareness of self and environment)

· Psychoanalysis (seeks to reveal unconscious conflicts)

· Humanistic (emphasizes positive nature)

· Cognitive (seeks to change maladaptive thoughts)

· Group Therapy

· Family

· Group (i.e. AA, Narcotics Anonymous, etc.)

The type of therapy needed is dependent on what is being treated. You can’t just go into any therapist’s office and start talking and asking for medications. Psychology uses an evidence-based practice (Links to an external site.) approach.

Hit reply and type your answers to the following:  

1. Answer ONE of the following:

· What brought on the deinstitutionalization movement? What were some of the negative and positive outcomes of this?

· What does it mean to say that psychology uses an evidence-based practice approach? Give an example of one disorder and treatment for that disorder that follows this approach and explain why it does.

2. Pick one of the following therapeutic approaches: psychoanalysis, humanistic, behavior therapy, cognitive therapy, or biomedical therapy. The book has sections describing each of these approaches as well as a section at the end titled, “Taking Stock: an appraisal of…(fill-in-the-blank approach)”. Explain the overall premise of the approach and give the benefits and limitations of the approach.

3. Pick ONE to answer (but not the same as you picked for #2):

· How do the tenets of psychoanalysis influence insight therapy? 

· How do the tenets of behaviorism influence behavioral therapy? 

· How do the tenets of cognitive psychology influence cognitive therapy? 

· How do the tenets of biological psychology influence biomedical therapy? 

4. Similar to last week, find a first person account of a person’s treatment of their psychological disorder. You can find either a written artifact – blog, article, news story – or a video. Describe the person’s disorder, the treatment method that they are undergoing, their experience with the treatment, and what successful treatment should look like. Be sure to share where you got the first person account