Treatment of Psychological Disorders by Behavioral Therapy

Psychological Disorders

•There are many behavioral methods that are very effective in treatment.

•These therapies are able to provide positive change in their client.

•When several methods are likely to be equally effective, therapists give their client a choice such as, to use graduated or intense exposure.

Depression

• Behavioral interventions for positive change.

• Rating Scale are used to assess feelings of guilt, sadness, and failure and change in appetite, sleeping, health, sex and other behaviors.

• Set and plan realistic goals with their patients.

• Increase daily activities.

• Social skills training such as modeling appropriate behavior, role playing, and behavioral rehearsal.

• Increase pleasant social interactions

Case

• A 29 year old divorced mother with children aged 5 and 7.

• Crying spells and frequent absences from work.

• Worried about her older child’s school performance and was upset about her ex-husband’s failure to provide child support.

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

• Exposure and response prevention (E/RP) is effective technique.

• E/RP consists of exposure for an hour or two at a time to situations that provoke discomfort.

• Situations that produce distress are graded from moderate to severe.

• Detailed information about the symptoms.

• Often rating schedules, daily logs, and brief assessment instruments are also used.

• Home visits, outside work, assistance from friends and relatives is extremely helpful.

Case

• June, a 26 year old married woman with obsessions and compulsions regarding cleanliness.

• She required 45 minutes in shower and washes her hands 20 times a day.

• In treatment planning the therapist make use of imaginal and in vivo exposure techniques.

General Anxiety Disorder

• Replacing an anxiety response with a relaxation response.

• Four-step approach in using relaxation training.

Case

• A 20 year old college girl worries about her grades, getting into graduate school and getting all of her work done.

• When stressed accelerated heart rate, sweating, pressure in her chest and headaches is reported.

• Trained in progressive relaxation and taught to monitor early anxiety cues.

Phobic Disorder

• General treatment approach is to reduce the anxiety.

• Systematic desensitization is paired with relaxation responses.

• Intense imaginal exposure techniques.

• In vivo exposure and modeling can be used.

Case

• Treatment of a 6 year old girl who had a phobia of balloons.

• Avoided situations having balloons, activities including balloons and even have nightmares about balloons.