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9: Therapy and Treatment

  • Page ID
    18161
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    In this chapter, you will see that approaches to therapy include both psychological and biological interventions, all with the goal of alleviating distress. Because psychological problems can originate from various sources—biology, genetics, childhood experiences, conditioning, and sociocultural influences—psychologists have developed many different therapeutic techniques and approaches.

    • 9.1: Mental Health Treatment - Past and Present
      Before we explore the various approaches to therapy used today, let’s begin our study of therapy by looking at how many people experience mental illness and how many receive treatment. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2013), 19% of U.S. adults experienced mental illness in 2012. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), in 2008, 13.4% of adults received treatment for a mental health issue.
    • 9.2: Types of Treatment
      Two types of therapy are psychotherapy and biomedical therapy. Both types of treatment help people with psychological disorders, such as depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia. Psychotherapy is a psychological treatment that employs methods to help someone overcome personal problems, or to attain personal growth. In modern practice, it has evolved into what is known as psychodynamic therapy. Biomedical therapy involves medication and/or medical procedures to treat psychological disorders.
    • 9.3: Treatment Modalities
      Once a person seeks treatment, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, he has an intake done to assess his clinical needs. An intake is the therapist’s first meeting with the client. The therapist gathers specific information to address the client’s immediate needs, such as the presenting problem, the client’s support system, and insurance status. The therapist informs the client about confidentiality, fees, and what to expect in treatment.
    • 9.4: The Sociocultural Model and Therapy Utilization
      Multicultural counseling and therapy aims to offer both a helping role and process that uses modalities and defines goals consistent with the life experiences and cultural values of clients. It strives to recognize client identities to include individual, group, and universal dimensions, advocate the use of universal and culture-specific strategies and roles in the healing process, and balances the importance of individualism and collectivism in the assessment, diagnosis, and treatment.

    Thumbnail: This is the famous couch in Freud’s consulting room. Patients were instructed to lie comfortably on the couch and to face away from Freud in order to feel less inhibited and to help them focus. Today, a psychotherapy patient is not likely to lie on a couch; instead he is more likely to sit facing the therapist (Prochaska & Norcross, 2010). (credit: Robert Huffstutter).


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