Treatments - AP Psychology

Many approaches and treatments have found to be successful in reducing PTSD. Some of the most successful include eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, participation in rap or therapy groups, psychological debriefing, insight therapy, and behavioral exposure techniques.

Exposure treatments are some of the most effective treatments for phobias. Exposure treatments include systematic desensitization, flooding, relaxation training, and participant modeling. Avoidance is not a viable means of overcoming a phobia.

Dissociative identity disorder is highly disruptive due to the overarching presence of subpersonalities that are controlling different aspects of a person's life. The goal in therapy is to fuse all the personalities, not help them all obtain equal power and "face time" in the life of a person.

Seasonal affective disorder is a mood disorder associated with episodes of depression during the winter months, and appears to be related to a lack of sunshine causing increased melatonin production by the pineal gland. It can be helped by phototherapy with bright white fluorescent lights.

Behavorial therapy is used to change maladaptive behaviors such as smoking or alcohol abuse. Cognitive therapy is used to remove negative thoughts that harm a person's emotional health. Psychotherapy is any means of treating psychiatric disorders by mental rather than pharmacological means. Electroconvulsive therapy is the use of electric shock to produce convulsions and treat drug-resistant psychiatric disorders.

SSRIs, cognitive therapy, group therapy, and person-centered therapy are all treatments for depression; systematic desensitization is a therapy for anxiety disorders, especially phobias.

Free association, dream analysis, resistance, and transference are all aspects of psychodynamic/psychoanalytic therapy. Free association is when a patient talks in a relaxed and aimless way about anything that comes to mind so the therapist can try to determine any thoughts that might be repressed. Dream analysis is when the content of a patient's dreams is analyzed in order to understand the patient's unconscious, especially their wishes. Resistance is when a patient blocks memories from the conscious mind and/or becomes resistant to therapy when the therapist is getting near the heart of why the patient is in therapy. Transference is when the patient begins to react to the therapist in ways influenced by their childhood desires.

Unconditional positive regard is an aspect of person-centered humanistic therapy.

Though the amount of drug they must take increases, the types of effects of the drug are the same. Tolerance can eventually lead to withdrawal symptoms if the drug is not taken.

SSRIs CAN be, and are often, combined with cognitive talk therapy. In fact, it would be quite rare for a person to be prescribed anti-depressants without some element of talk therapy being used as a part of their course of treatment.

During surgical procedures, the brain tissue can be damaged or removed completely. This is known as an ablation.

There are many reasons why people may resist or not seek out treatment for a psychological disorder. Social stigma surrounds psychological disorders and their treatment; someone might be afraid of seeming "crazy" if he or she seeks treatment. In addition, some disorders, particularly personality disorders, are characterized by a lack of awareness, so people who have them might not realize they need help. Lastly, people might be overwhelmed at the thought of how/where to start treatment and worried that therapy and medication will be too costly.

Psychosurgery is surgery performed on the brain and it is one of the last resorts in treatment because it is costly, risky, intrusive, and still debated by scientists today. Prefrontal lobotomies were one of the first methods of psychosurgery and ended up leading to grave side effects for many of the people who underwent it.

The difference between a psychiatrist and clinical psychologist is mostly in their functions-- psychiatrists give referrals for medications and clinical psychologists act as therapists. Both psychiatrists and clinical psychologists have to go to graduate school for multiple years. Keep in mind that although their functions differ, they often work together to help a patient successfully go through treatment.

Research has shown that combination treatment, i.e. taking medication and doing therapy at the same time, is the most effective type of treatment and therefore leads to faster, better recovery. Although some people start off with medication and move to therapy or vice versa, that has not shown to increase the effectiveness of treatment.

ECT is a last resort treatment for individuals with extremely severe or suicidal depression. The harsh side-effects, past abuses of the procedure, and the general neurological risks of the procedure make it a controversial and rarely used procedure. The practice is still in use in some very limited situations, but it is NOT used for "anyone with depression."

"Psychosurgery" is largely out of use today, though it was popular closer to the beginning and middle of the 20th century. "Psychosurgery" is surgical intervention, usually performed on the brain, in order to treat psychological ailments. The most famous form of psychosurgery is the lobotomy, and it is a form of treatment where a portion of the brain is lesioned or destroyed to alter a person's behavior.

A lobotomy is a psychosurgical procedure that involves cutting away most of an individual's connections to their prefrontal cortex. This technique was popularized in the 1940s and 1950s to treat highly violent and dangerous patients; however, this surgery rendered them catatonic and unable to express emotion. It is rarely used in practice today.

Of all the psychological disorders, bipolar disorder has the highest rate of suicide at 15-20%. Is is directly followed by schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder, both around 10-15%. While the factors leading to suicide vary widely, these rates demonstrate the great difficulties that come with the inherent symptoms of disorder.

In this instance, Suzie became more used to the sight of blood after periods of exposure. In this way, because of this gradual exposure, she was desensitized to the sight of blood.

Lithium is typically used to treat the manic symptomology associated with bipolar disorder.