How many different kinds of therapy can you name? What areas of psychology do treatments for psychological disorders come from? Psychology has come a long way since the early days. Previously people were locked in an asylum or experimented on and hoped the intervention worked. Now we have more advanced and many options readily available. In this explanation, we will explore the different types of psychological treatment.
- First, we will look at different types of psychological treatment.
- Next, we will explore some psychological treatment examples.
- Then we will discuss some psychological treatments for Depression.
- After, we will discuss some psychological treatments for Schizophrenia.
- Finally, we will touch on some phobia treatments in psychology.
Types of Psychological Treatment
Psychological treatments, also known as psychological therapies, are different types of therapies. A person works with a qualified therapist to understand and find solutions to their thinking, behaviour, and problems to improve their quality of life. Depending on the type of help a person needs, therapies can take various forms, including:
- Individual sessions.
- As a couple or with members of the person’s family.
- In a group of people who have the same difficulties.
The length of time a person is treated depends on the nature of the problem they face and the type of therapy proposed. Different therapies relate to various areas of psychology and they can be used in conjunction with one another depending on the individual's needs, including:
We will explore examples of these different approaches to psychological treatments in the next section.
Psychological Treatment Examples
Here we will look at different areas of psychology, and a few examples of treatments a psychologist in that area may recommend as or alongside psychological therapies.
Biological Treatments
Biological treatments aim at changing the brain's physical or physiological aspects through medications or other ways of directly intervening with the brain through medications or other ways of directly intervening with the brain. They typically work well alongside another form of psychological treatment involving support from a therapist. Two examples include:
- Drug Therapy - medications that can affect hormone or neurotransmitter levels, often used in Depression, Schizophrenia and anger management treatment.
- Psychosurgery - involves selective brain surgery to remove or disrupt a nerve pathway to try and change behaviour.
Psychodynamic Treatments
Psychodynamic treatments work as a psychological treatment as analysis therapy involves in-depth exploration of unconscious issues that people require help interpreting at a conscious level. Two examples include:
- Dream Analysis - a type of talk therapy based on the Freudian use of symbolism to interpret dreams to understand their meaning.
- Group Analysis Psychotherapy - uses group therapy sessions to talk through issues and gain an in-depth understanding of the unconscious mind.
Behavioural Treatments
Behavioural treatments involve therapies that identify how thoughts and beliefs influence behaviour and find ways to learn new or change behaviours. Some examples include:
- Aversion therapy - uses conditioning to link a negative or unpleasant association with a specific stimulus and is often used as a therapy for substance addiction.
- Systematic desensitisation - involves working with a therapist to build on exposure to a feared stimulus. Research suggests it's effective for treating Phobias, anxiety and post-traumatic Stress (PTSD) disorders.
Cognitive Treatments
Cognitive treatments are psychological therapies that involve reconstructing unhelpful thought and belief patterns to change; examples include:
- Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) - involves helping a client identify maladaptive thoughts, feelings and behaviour and helping the individual develop skills and strategies to combat these. Typically, this treatment is used for anxiety, depression, schizophrenia and Phobias.
- Rational emotive behaviour therapy - requires identifying negative beliefs and thought patterns causing emotional distress and learning more rational, positive thoughts to counter these patterns.
Positive Psychology Treatments
Positive Psychology studies thriving human health and wellness to establish how people can flourish in individuals' daily life. Psychological treatments include:
- Mindfulness therapies - can be done with therapist supervision or alone. Mindfulness aims to centre the mind in the present moment to prevent worrying about the past and future.
- Quality of life therapy - aims to increase happiness and satisfaction by identifying characteristics of different areas of life to find meaning and create abundance.
Fig 1. - Positive Psychology focuses on people's wellness and teaching people how to thrive in daily life.
Psychological Treatments for Depression
More and more talk therapies and other treatments are available for treating depression in individual, one-to-one sessions or group therapies. E-learning in the form of self-help applications is another option.
Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
CBT is one of the most effective methods for treating depression and is successful with children, adolescents, adults, and older adults. As mentioned, CBT is based on the premise that how we think and act affects our feelings; in essence, cognition and behaviour influence our emotions.
The focus is on changing one's thoughts and behaviours by encouraging people to think rationally about any situation that makes them feel depressed. Doing so helps change previous negative feelings into more realistic and positive ones.
Psychological Treatment: Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT)
MBCT is usually conducted in groups and incorporates aspects of cognitive Behavioural Therapy and mindfulness techniques. Patients learn meditation and recognise that their thoughts are not all they are.
MBCT helps stop thoughts from wandering into the past or the future. How can MBCT help with depressive symptoms? By encouraging one to notice feelings of sadness and negative thoughts early, one can deal with the warning signs sooner and more effectively.
Figure 2. - Meditation can help reduce depressive symptoms, pexels.com.
Biological Treatment: Drug Therapy
Alongside cognitive-behavioural treatments, to try to make treatment for depression more successful, drugs such as antidepressants can be prescribed as a treatment. They work by increasing the neurotransmitters known as noradrenaline and serotonin neurotransmitters that are associated with mood regulation.
Providing more balanced brain chemistry can help to combat some of the symptoms of depression, such as low mood, meaning that other aspects of life such as sleep, eating, and socialising habits can be improved too.
Psychological Treatments for Schizophrenia
Depending on the severity of symptoms, different types or combinations of treatment may be suggested for people diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) for Schizophrenia
Using CBT, people with schizophrenia can learn to recognise examples of their false beliefs, which can help to avoid acting on those thoughts. CBT is an effective way to manage symptoms, not eradicate them. The intervention works by identifying specific triggers, reactions and the effects of the resulting behaviour.
Some examples of false beliefs include self-image, beliefs about what others think, expectations about others' behaviour, paranoia about someone trying to hurt them and one's coping mechanisms.
By getting help to rationalise, challenge and reframe thoughts, people can let go of any shame or stigma they may feel surrounding their symptoms. The development of healthy coping strategies using logical thinking can have a positive effect on managing symptoms in daily life.
Psychological Treatment: Family Therapy
In Family Therapy, family members come together and express their thoughts and feelings under the therapist's guidance. This can effectively educate family members on their loved one's symptoms, develop skills/problem solving to effectively manage behaviour and provide a safe space to talk to reduce Stress and regulate emotions.
Biological Treatment: Drug Therapy
Alongside other psychological therapies, biological treatments for schizophrenia can effectively manage symptoms. These involve antipsychotic drugs which are either typical (only influencing dopamine levels and positive symptoms) or atypical (which affect other neurotransmitters too, such as serotonin and glutamate and also address both negative and positive symptoms of schizophrenia).
Phobia Treatment in Psychology
The most common psychological treatments for phobias come from the behavioural approach to psychological treatments, but positive psychology can be incorporated too.
Behavioural Treatment: Exposure Therapy
Exposure therapy begins with the patient making a list of their phobias. The therapist then teaches the patient general relaxation techniques when exposed to unimaginable stress, i.e., when they encounter a phobia. The phobias are then addressed, starting from things that cause the least distress to fears that cause intense distress.
Suppose a person has a fear of elevators. In this case, they might start by imagining being in an elevator, then looking at pictures of elevators, then going near an elevator, then standing in an elevator, and so on, until they can finally ride in a crowded elevator.
Behavioural Treatment: Systematic Desensitisation
Systematic desensitisation is based on the principles of classical conditioning, in which the response of fear will be replaced with a calm response learnt to be associated with the stimulus during therapy sessions. It encompasses some aspects of exposure therapy but starts with learning muscle relaxing techniques before writing lists of phobias and then exposure to them.
Learning to be relaxed first uses the assumption that people cannot be stressed and relaxed at the same time, so learning to relax before seeing something fearful will lead to developing a calm response eventually.
Fig 3. - Psychological Treatments can provide a safe space for people to overcome phobias, wiki.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) for Phobias
People with phobias tend to develop thought patterns around the phobia that are not necessarily based on reality. When confronted with the phobia, they tend to catastrophise.
Catastrophising is when you imagine the worst possible outcomes, reinforcing fears.
CBT helps patients identify their unhelpful thoughts and replace them with more accurate ones. There are several ways to do this:
- When encountering a phobia, one should remember it is just a phobia.
- They should remind themselves that it will soon be over.
- It is the thoughts that reinforce the fear.
- The patient should try and change their maladaptive thought processes to adaptive ones.
This can be combined with MCBT also, as mindfulness techniques such as meditation, deep breathing, and progressive muscle relaxation can help reduce the stress a person may feel in a fearful situation.
Psychological Treatment - Key takeaways
- Psychological treatments include various forms of talk therapy where a patient works with a qualified therapist to understand their thinking and behaviour, understand their problems and find solutions to them to improve their quality of life.
- There are different approaches to aiding in psychological treatment, including biological, cognitive, behavioural, psychodynamic and positive psychology approaches.
- CBT, Drug Therapy and MCBT can aid in the treatment of depression.
- Treatment for schizophrenia depends on the severity of the symptoms, but therapies suggested are combinations of Family Therapy, CBT and drug therapy.
- Phobias are treated with exposure therapy, systematic desensitisation, CBT, and using mindfulness techniques.
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