Download Psychology, 8th Edition – Myers Chapter 17

Psychology, 8th Edition – Myers
Chapter 17- Therapy
Two categories of therapy – psychological and biomedical
 Use depends on the problem
Psychotherapy – an emotionally charged confiding interaction between a train therapist and someone who
suffers from psychological difficulties
 Useful for treating phobias because they are psychologically learned.
Biomedical therapy – prescribed medications or medical procedures that act directly on the patient’s nervous
system.
 Useful for biologically rooted illness such as schizophrenia.
Eclectic approach – an approach to psychotherapy that, depending on the client’s problems, uses techniques
from various forms of therapy
 Therapists that believe in a biopsychosocial approach
 Half of therapists report using an eclectic approach or a blend of therapies.
The Psychological Therapies
 Psychoanalytic, humanistic, behavioral, and cognitive
Psychoanalysis
 While Freud’s ideas on personality are debunked, many therapists use some of his therapeutic
techniques.
 Psychoanalysis – Freud’s therapy techniques; Freud believed that patient’s free associations,
resistances, dreams, and transferences – and the therapists interpretations of them – released previously
repressed feelings, allow the patient to gain self-insight.
Aims
 Try to help patients gain insight into the unconscious origins and roots of their disorders and work
through anxiety-ridden feelings.
Methods
 Free association – patient relaxes and starts talking about anything; the psychoanalyst uses your edits,
jokes, line of thought to gain insight into what might be causing the problem.
 Resistance – in psychoanalysis, the blocking from consciousness of anxiety-laden material
o Blocks in the flow of free association
o Hint that anxiety exists and you are defending against sensitive material
 Interpretation – in psychoanalysis, the analyst’s noting supposed dream meanings, resistances, and
other significant behaviors and events in order to promote insight.
o Insight into your underlying wishes, feelings, and conflicts.
o Ex: not wanting to talk about your mother could be interpreted as the unconscious hiding some
negative childhood experience with your mother.
 Patients disclose a great deal of personal information with analysts
o Particularly early childhood memories
 Transference – in psychoanalysis, the patient’s transfer to the analysts of emotions linked with other
relationships (such as love or hatred for a parent).
o Patients can develop strong negative or positive feelings for the therapist, including dependency,
mingled love and anger.
 Criticisms
o Interpretations cannot be proven or disproven; psychoanalysts say that psychoanalysis is therapy,
not a science.
o Time consuming – years long
o Expensive – several sessions a week
o Most therapists do not offer psychoanalysis except in France, Germany, Quebec, and New York
City
Psychodynamic Therapy
 Influenced by Freud
 Try to understand a patient’s current symptoms by focusing on themes across important relationships,
including childhood experiences and the therapist relationship.
o May talk to the patients face-to-face (rather than with the patient facing away)
o Once a week (rather than several times a week)
o For only a few weeks or months (rather than several years)
 Looking for reoccurring themes, patterns of behaviors especially in relationships
 Interpersonal therapy – a brief (12-16 sessions) variation of psychodynamic therapy - aims to help
people gain insight into the roots of their difficulties but its goal is symptom relief in the here and now,
not overall personality change - focuses primary on current relationships and on helping people improve
their relationship skills. (Useful in treating depression)
Humanistic Therapies
 Emphasizes people’s inherent potential for self-fulfillment
 Aim to boost self-fulfillment by helping people grow in self-awareness and self-acceptance through…
o Focusing on the present and future more than the past (like psychoanalysis)
o Conscious rather than unconscious thoughts
o Taking responsibility for one’s feelings and actions, rather than blaming it on unconscious
conflicts
o Promoting growth instead of curing illness – “clients” rather than “patients”
 Client-centered therapy – a humanistic therapy, developed by Carl Rogers, in which the therapist uses
techniques such as active listening within a genuine, accepting, empathetic environment to facilitate
clients’ growth.
o Focuses on the client’s perceptions rather than the therapist’s interpretations
o Therapist listens, without judging or interpreting, and refrains from directing the client toward
certain insights (nondirective therapy)
o Therapists must demonstrate genuineness, acceptance, and empathy (according to Rogers,
necessary for self-fulfillment)  clients feel unconditionally accepted
 Active listening – empathetic listening in which the listener echoes, restates, and clarifies; a feature of
Rogers’ client-centered therapy
o Needs to be nondirective and must not include therapists’ interpretations of client’s descriptions.
o Hints to active listening:
 Paraphrase – check your understanding by summarizing the speaker’s words in your own
words.
 Invite clarification – “What might be an example of that?” may encourage the speaker to
say more.
 Reflect feelings – “It sounds frustrating” might mirror what you’re sensing from the
speaker’s body language and intensity.
 Humanistic therapists emphasize accepting and understanding the client through unconditional positive
regard.
Behavioral Therapies
 Behavioral therapists do not emphasize the mental root of a disorder as they assume that the problem
behaviors are the problems.
 Behavior therapy – therapy that applies learning principles to the elimination of unwanted behaviors
o Common for treating phobias, sexual disorders
o Believe that symptoms, like anxiety, are learned behaviors that can be replaced with constructive
behaviors.
Classical Conditioning Techniques
 We learn various behaviors and emotions through classical conditioning; therefore maladaptive
symptoms are examples of conditioned responses.
 O.H. Mowrer developed a behavioral therapy for chronic bed-wetting that was effective in 3 of 4 cases.
o The child sleeps on a liquid-sensitive pad connected to an alarm.
o Moisture on the pad triggers the alarm to sound, waking the child.
o With sufficient repetition, the association of urinary relaxation with waking up stops the bedwetting.
o Boosts the child self-image.
 Counterconditioning – a behavior therapy procedure that conditions new responses to stimuli that
trigger unwanted behaviors, based on classical conditions. Includes exposure therapy and aversive
conditioning.
o Ex: a claustrophobic person fear elevations due to a learned aversion to enclosed spaces. A
behavioral therapist could use counterconditioning by pairing the elevator with a relaxed
response to displace the fear response.
Exposure Therapies
 Behavioral techniques, such as systematic desensitization, that treat anxieties by exposing people (in
imagination or reality) to the things that they fear and avoid.
 People habituate to the things that once scared them so that with repeated exposure they become less
anxious.
 Ex: some airlines offer education and gradual exposure to simulated and actual air travel to ease the fear
of flying. This can include touring an airport and a plane, including the cockpit, where the pilot can
explain how the plane works.
 Systematic desensitization – a type of counterconditioning that associates a pleasant relaxed state with
gradually increasing anxiety-triggering stimuli; commonly used to treat phobias.
o Ex: fear of public speaking.
o 1. The therapist might ask you to create a rated list or hierarchy of anxiety-triggering events that
could range from talking in front of small groups or friends to giving an address in front of a
large audience.
o 2. Using progressive relaxation, the therapist trains you to relax your muscles into a state of
complete relaxation and comfort. Then the therapist asks you to imagine a situation that creates
mild anxiety, like talking in front of a group of friends. If it arouses anxiety, you raise a finger
and the therapist tells you to stop thinking about it and return to relaxation. This pairing is
repeated until the imagined situation no longer produces anxiety.
o 3. The therapist progresses up the hierarchy of anxiety-arousing situations, using the
desensitization technique to relax you to each imagined situation. This is repeated over several
sessions.
o 4. The therapist moves from imagined situations to actual situations, beginning with the ones that
cause the least anxiety. Conquering an actual situation leads to a boost in self-confidence.
 Virtual reality exposure therapy – an anxiety treatment that progressively exposes people to
simulations of their greatest fears such as airplane flying, spiders, or public speaking.
o When the anxiety-arousing stimulus is impossible, dangerous, or too expensive to recreate.
Aversive Conditioning
 A type of counterconditioning that associates an unpleasant state (such as nausea) with an unwanted
behavior (such as drinking alcohol or smoking)
 Different from systematic desensitization (that induces relaxation) because it aims to induce negative
feelings or an uncomfortable state  the reverse of systematic desensitization
 Ex: to treat nail biting, one can pain the fingernails with a bad tasting nail polish.
 Ex: to treat alcoholism, a person can drink appealing tasting and smelling drinks laced with a drug that
induces nausea or vomiting.
 Highly successful in the short-run, but has mixed results in the long-run.
o Cognition also influences learning. For example, the alcoholic knows that outside of the
therapists office, alcoholic drinks to not cause nausea, and may continue to drink anyway.
(display discrimination)
 Used in combination with other treatments.
Operant Conditioning
 Behaviors are influenced by their consequences.
 Behavior modification – reinforcing desired behaviors and withholding reinforcement or using
punishment for undesired behaviors.
 Attempts to shape behaviors through praise, concrete rewards like food, or a token economy – an
operant conditioning procedure in which people earn a token of some sort for exhibiting a desired
behavior and can later exchange the tokens for various privileges or treats.
 Used to help autistic children become more social. Can teach schizophrenic sufferers or the mentally
retarded to care for themselves.
 Critics of behavior modification
o What happens when the reinforcement stops and the person has to interact with the real world?
How do you make learned behaviors durable? – behavior modification supporters say that
rewards do not have to be external, but can be internal and practical, such as positive
reinforcement in the form of social approval or internal satisfaction.
o Is it right for one human to control another’s behavior? Is punishment unethical? – behavior
modification supporters say that some clients request the treatment and they understand the
consequences. Plus, the control already exists by some form of reinforcement or punishment that
maintains the destructive behaviors.
Cognitive Therapies
 Behavior therapy seems to be effective for specific fears or problem behaviors, but what happens when
the maladaptive feelings or behaviors do not have a specific root, like major depressive disorder or
generalized anxiety disorder?
 Cognitive therapies – therapy that teaches people new, more adaptive ways of thinking and acting
based on the assumption that thoughts intervene between events and our emotional reactions.  try to
change patterns of thinking.
Cognitive Therapy for Depression
 Depressed people do not exhibit the self-serving bias common in nondepressed people. Instead they
attribute their failure to themselves and attribute their successes to external circumstances.
 Cognitive therapists would try to change this thinking pattern.
o Ex: write a list of every positive thing that happened in the day and tell how you contributed to it.
 positive thinking exercises
o Ex: getting people to change what they say to themselves. Students who felt anxiety before a test
probably would say, “This exam is probably going to be impossible. I know I’m going to fail.”
The therapist would instruct the patient to say positive things to themselves, to reduce anxiety
and boost confidence, like “Relax. This exam may be hard, but it will be hard for everyone. I
don’t need a perfect score for a good grade.”
 Cognitive-behavior therapy – a popular integrated therapy that combines cognitive therapy (changes in
thinking) with behavior therapy (changing behaviors)
o Seeks to make people aware of maladaptive thinking patterns and replace them with new ways of
thinking, AND to practice the more positive approaches and behaviors as well.
o Ex: OCD sufferers learned to relabel their obsessive thoughts by telling themselves “I am
havening a compulsive urge” when they felt like they needed to commit their compulsions.
Instead of committing the compulsive behavior, they engaged in an enjoyable alternative
behavior such as playing an instrument, taking a walk, or gardening. This helped shift focus
away from the obsessive thoughts. This type of therapy also normalized brain activity in the
OCD patients.
Group and Family Therapies
 Except for psychoanalytic therapies, these techniques can be used in therapist-led small groups.
 Group therapy does not allow for the same degree of individual attention, but it is time and cost effective
and has often been found no less effective than individual therapy.
 Group therapy is frequently suggested for families experiencing conflict or those whose behavior is
distressing to others. The therapist guides the interaction of the people as they engage in issues and react
to one another.
 The social context of group therapy often allows client to feel as if they are not alone in their problems.
It can be a relief to find that others share your problems and feelings.
 Family therapy – therapy that treats the family as a system; views an individual’s unwanted behaviors
as influenced by or directed at other family members; attempts to guide family members toward positive
relationships and improved communication.
o Help family members discover the role they play within their family’s social system and to open
communication by discovering new ways of preventing or resolving conflicts.
 Self-help and support groups either in person or online can also help manage problems.
o AA, AIDS support groups, etc
 More than 10 million Americans belong to small religious, interest, or self-help groups that meet
regularly  reflects a longing for community and connectedness.
 9 of 10 members in support groups report that members “support each other emotionally.”
Evaluating Psychotherapies
 Since the 1950s, psychotherapy is not only practiced by psychiatrists, but also clinical and counseling
psychologists; clinical social workers; pastoral, marriage, abuse, and school counselors; and psychiatric
nurses.
 Much therapy is done through community mental health programs, which provide outpatient therapy,
crisis phone lines, and hallways houses for those making the transition from hospitalization to
independent living.
 We must ask the question then, “Is psychotherapy, in which you make an appointment with a specific
therapist, effective?”
Is Psychotherapy Effective?
 Gauging effectiveness is difficult. Do you gauge effectiveness through how we feel about our progress?
How our therapist feels about it? How our friends and family feel about it? How our behavior has
changed?
Client’s Perceptions
 Client testimonials about the effectiveness of psychotherapy are vastly positive. 9 in 10 people report
leaving therapy feeling at least so-so after the session. Should we take their word for it? They are the
ones who directly and immediately benefit from the therapy. However there are some skeptics:
o People often enter therapy in crisis. – when the crisis passes, people may attribute their
improvement to the therapy.
o Clients may need to believe the therapy was worth it. – Self-justification is a powerful human
motive to justify or rationalize spending time and money on therapy.
o Clients generally speak kindly of their therapists. – Even if the client’s problems are not solved
or lessened, they still seem to say kind things about the therapist so the therapy doesn’t appear as
a failure.
 Testimonials can be misleading because we are prone to selective and biased recall and to making
judgments that confirm our beliefs.
 500 Massachusetts boys, aged 5-13, many seemed bound for delinquency
o Half of the boys received no treatment, the other half were assigned to a five-year treatment
program.
o Counselors visited the boys twice a month, boys participated in community programs like the
Boy Scouts, they received academic tutoring, medical attention, and family assistance.
o The boys reported 30 years later that they were thankful and grateful for the services. 66% had
no official juvenile crime record.
o 70% of the control group, who received no treatment, did not have official juvenile crime records
and had fewer psychological and medical problems.
o Testimonials can be deceiving.
Clinician’s Perceptions
 Clinicians tend to overestimate the effectiveness of their psychotherapy for several reasons:
o Clients justify entering psychotherapy due to their unhappiness, justify leaving psychotherapy by
emphasizing their well-being.
o Therapists are more aware of the failures of other therapists, whose clients are no seeking a new
therapist for their recurring problems. The same person with the same recurring problems could
be considered a “success story” for several therapists.
o Although treatments have varied widely, every generation of therapists view its own approach as
the most enlightened and effective.
“Regressing” from Unusual to Usual

Clients’ and therapists’ perceptions of the effectiveness of therapy are susceptible to inflation for two
reasons:
o The placebo effect – if we are told something will work and we believe it will, we can feel the
effects regardless of its effectiveness
o Regression toward the mean – the tendency for extremes of unusual scores to fall back
(regress) toward their average.
 When we experience unusual or extraordinary feelings (such as depression) and then
return to a normal state, we perceive anything we have done in the interim time as being
effective in returning to the normal state.
 We sometimes attribute what may be a normal regression to something we have done, for
example therapy.
Outcome Research
 To judge psychotherapy’s effectiveness, researchers have turned to performing controlled experiments.
 Outcome studies are randomized clinical trials in which people on a waiting list receive therapy or no
therapy.
 Meta-analysis – a procedure for statistically combining the results of many different research studies
o Meta-analysis of outcome studies show that people who remain untreated often improve (2/3),
people who receive psychotherapy are more likely to improve, and people who receive
psychological treatment spend less time and money later seeking other medical treatments,
compared with those on the waiting list.
The Relative Effectiveness of Different Therapies
 No one type of therapy is overwhelmingly superior to others.
o Consumer Reports readers reported being equally satisfied, no matter the type of therapy
received and whether they were treated with a psychiatrist, psychologist, or social worker.
o Group vs. individual sessions also had no effect on satisfaction with therapy.
o Training level and experience of therapist also had no effect on satisfaction.
 However there are certain types of therapy that seem best suited to certain disorders and problems:
o Depression: cognitive therapy, interpersonal therapy, behavior therapy
o Anxiety: cognitive therapy, exposure therapy, and stress inoculation
o Bulimia: cognitive-behavioral therapy
o Bed-wetting: behavior modification
o Phobias, compulsions, marital problems, and sexual disorders: behavioral therapy and
conditioning
o Reducing suicide risk: cognitive therapy
 Therapy is most effective when the problem is clear-cut and specific.
o Those who experience phobias or panic, who are unassertive, or who are frustrated by sexual
performance problems can hope for improvement.
o Those who suffer less-focused problems, such as depression and anxiety, usually benefit in the
short-run but often relapse later.
o Those who have chronic schizophrenia or who wish to change their personality are unlikely to
benefit from psychotherapy alone.
 Debate continues over the extent to which therapy should be:
o A science, using evidence-based practices and well-defined and validated therapies, allows
therapy to gain credibility, protects the public from pseudotherapies.
o An art, not something that can be manually tested or measured in an experiment, people are too
complex and therapy is too intuitive for a cookie-cutter approach.
Evaluating Alternative Therapies
 The placebo effect and tendency to regress to a normal state contribute to the existence of
pseudotherapies and alternative therapies.
o Hypnotherapists, spiritualists, anger-release therapist, reflexologists, aromatherapists, colonic
irrigationists, mind-body therapists, massage therapy, herbal medicines, etc
 Every therapy, based on testimonials, will seem effective for some.
 For many pseudotherapies, no scientific evidence about the effectiveness exists, because their
proponents do conducted controlled experiments.
 As critical thinkers, exploring and evaluating pseudotherapies requires a scientific attitude (being
skeptical but not cynical, and open to surprise but not gullible.)
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
 In EMDR therapy, a therapist attempts to unlock and reprocess previously frozen traumatic memories by
waving a finger in front of the eyes of a person imagining a traumatic scene.
 EDMR has its believers and also its critics.
 Some researchers believe that EMDR seems effective because it is a combination of exposure therapy
(repeatedly reliving traumatic memories in a safe and reassuring context) and the placebo effect.
Light Exposure Therapy
 Seasonal affective disorder – (SAD) a form of depression linked to periods of decreased sunlight.
 SAD is commonly treated with light exposure therapy – exposure to daily timed doses of light that
mimics outdoor light.
o Light comes out of manufactured light boxes that can be bought or rented from health supply and
lighting stores.
 Research and controlled experiments suggest that light exposure therapy diminishes symptoms
associated with SAD.
Commonalities among Psychotherapies
 Good therapists may differ in psychological perspectives, but are all compassionate, sensitive, and
empathetic.
 Therapy, regardless of perspective, also seems to offer 3 benefits:
o Hope for demoralized people
o A new perspective and attitude
o An empathetic, trusting, caring relationship
Culture and Values in Psychotherapy
 The values, beliefs, and cultural practices of psychotherapists can affect the way they practice and
interact with clients.
o Asian clients have difficulty with therapies that emphasize individual desires and well-being.
 Clients should have preliminary consultations with two or three therapists to gain an understanding of
the therapists’ values, credentials, and fees, and to find someone with whom they feel comfortable.
A Consumer’s Guide to Psychotherapy
 The APA suggests considering seeking a mental health profession if you display:
o Feelings of hopelessness
o Deep and lasting depression
o Self-destructive behavior, such as drug or alcohol abuse
o Disruptive fears
o Sudden mood shifts
o Thoughts of suicide
o Compulsive rituals, such as hand washing
o Sexual difficulties
 Have several preliminary consultations with different therapists.
Counselors
Clinical or
psychiatric social
workers
Clinical
psychologists
Clinical
psychiatrists
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Therapists and Their Training
Marriage and family problems
Pastoral counseling for religious people
Abuse counseling – substance and violence
2 year master of social work graduate program plus post-graduate supervision
Everyday personal and family problems
About half of nationally register social workers have a clinical degree
Most have PhD or PsyD and expertise in research, assessment, and therapy
Supervised internship
Post-doctoral training
Half work in agencies and institutions, half in private practices
Physicians who specialize in the treatment of psychological disorders
Can prescribe medication
Tend to see those with the most serious problems
May have their own practice
The Biomedical Therapies
 Biomedical therapies physically change the brain’s functioning by altering its chemistry with drugs,
overloading its circuits with electroconvulsive shock, using magnetic impulses to stimulate or dampen
activity, or altering its circuits through psychosurgery.
Drug Therapies
 Psychopharmacology – the study of the effects of drugs on mind and behavior.
o Led to more independent lives for sufferers of psychological disorders
o Reduced hospitalization of many people
 To evaluate the effectiveness of new drugs, researchers use the double-blind experimental technique to
reduce the placebo effect and researcher bias.
Antipsychotic Drugs
 Lessen responsiveness to irrelevant stimuli, therefore are helpful in treating schizophrenia’s positive
symptoms.
 Antipsychotic drugs block the dopamine receptors because the over activity of dopamine in the brain is
linked to schizophrenia.
 First-generation dopamine-blocking drugs targeted D2 receptors and produced sluggishness, tremors,
and twitches. Long-term use also led to tardive dykinesia – involuntary movements of the facial
muscles, tongue, and limbs; a possible neurotoxic side effect of long-term use of antipsychotic drugs
that target D2 receptors.
 New-generation dopamine-blocking drugs target D1 receptors and have fewer side effects, but seem to
increase the risk of obesity and diabetes.
 Dosages vary from person to person.
 Examples: D2 – Thorazine; D1 – clozapine, Risperdal, and Zyprexa
Antianxiety Drugs
 Depress central nervous system activity and can help a person learn to cope with frightening situations
and fear-triggering stimuli.
 Can be used a crutch, without actually solving the root of the anxiety.
 Users can become tolerant, addicted, and dependent on the medication.
 Examples: Xanax, Ativan
Antidepressant Drugs
 Commonly used to treat anxiety as well
 Increases the availability of norepinephrine or serotonin that elevate arousal and mood and appear scarce
during depression.
 Selective-serotonin-reuptake-inhibitors – slow or block the reabsorption or reuptake of serotonin
o Ex: Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil
 Dual-action antidepressants slow the reuptake and breakdown the epinephrine or serotonin
 Side effects – dry mouth, dizziness, weight gain, hypertension
 The full effect of antidepressants takes 4 weeks
 Aerobic exercise does about as much good for some people with mild to moderate depression and has
other positive side effects.
 Cognitive therapy can also improve depression with the help of medication, and keep patients from
relapsing after being taken off the drug.
 Suicide rates are lower for those taking antidepressant in the long-run but are concerning for those
initially taking antidepressants.
o Reduce one’ lethargy before they lift the emotions, those giving people enough energy to act on
the depression.
Mood Stabilizing Medication
 Lithium can be an effective mood stabilizer for those suffering from bipolar disorder.
 We are not sure why or how lithium works to stabilize mood shifts.
Brain Stimulation
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT)
 A biomedical therapy for severely depressed patients in which a brief electric current is sent through the
brain of an anesthetized patient.
o ECT was developed in the 1930s
o Strapping a patient to a table and surging 100 volts of electricity to their brain causing
convulsions and unconsciousness.
o Stigma still follows ECT
 Today, patients receive a general anesthetic and a muscle relaxant to prevent injury from convulsions.
The patient awakens with no recollection of the treatment or the hours preceding it.
 Usage is limited to severe depression
o 3 sessions/week for 2-4 weeks  80% show improvement in depression symptoms
o Loss of memory but no brain damage
 Research shows ECT is a successful treatment for the severely depressed who do not respond to drug
therapy.
 Reduces suicidal thoughts
 No one knows for sure why ECT works.
o May calm the brain centers that produce over activity that cause depression?
 Patients, as with many therapies, are vulnerable to relapse.
Alternatives to ECT
 Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) – the application of repeated pulses of magnetic
energy to the brain; used to stimulate or suppress brain activity.
o Penetrates only to brain’s surface
o Painless
o Wide-awake patients for 20-30 minutes for 2-4 weeks
o No seizures, memory loss, or other side effects
Psychosurgery
 Psychosurgery – surgery that removes or destroys brain tissue in an effort to change behavior.
 Effects are irreversible – most drastic and least-used biomedical treatment
 Lobotomy – a now-rare psychosurgical procedure once used to calm uncontrollably emotional or
violent patients. The procedure cut the nerves that connect the frontal lobes to the emotion-controlling
centers of the inner brain.
o Developed in the 1930s by Portuguese physician Egas Moniz
o Shock the patient into a coma
o Hammer an icepicklike instrument through each eye socket into the brain, then wiggle it to sever
connections running up to the frontal lobes.
o Crude but easy and inexpensive (10 minutes)
o Tens of thousands of severely disturbed people were lobotomized during the 1940s-50s
o Moniz got a Nobel Prize
o The lobotomy usually produced a permanently lethargic, immature, impulsive personality.
o In the 1950s, calming drugs were introduced and lobotomized fell out of favor in the US.
Preventing Psychological Disorders
 Preventing psychological disorders is difficult because it seeks to prevent conditions that cause
disorders, and there are many, many conditions that do this.
 Many psychological disorders have biological aspects, therefore is it possible to prevent what seems
inevitable? Humans are biopsychosocial creatures, therefore there is a connection between the mind and
the body.
Biological
 Biomedical treatments
 Drug therapies
 ECT
 rTMS
Successful Intervention
Psychological
 Psychotherapy
 Changing patterns of
thinking
Socio-cultural
 Psychotherapy
 Learning adaptive responses
to the social and cultural
influences in their
environment
 Psychotherapists need to be
sensitive to cultural
differences in the clients
they serve.