How can psychological disorders be treated

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Psychological treatments View print friendly version of this info. What's psychological treatment? It involves talking about your thoughts with a professional to: better understand your own thinking and behaviour understand and resolve your problems recognise symptoms of mental illness in yourself reduce your symptoms change your behaviour improve your quality of life.

Psychological treatments are useful for people of all ages, including children. They can help people from different cultural, social and language backgrounds. You can have psychological treatment in an individual session, as part of a group, or online. Why get psychological treatment? Psychological treatments are proven to help with mental illnesses such as: depression anxiety addiction eating disorders post-traumatic stress disorder obsessive-compulsive disorder personality disorders.

They are also used successfully to help people deal with: stress emotional problems grief and trauma relationship problems. They are not a quick fix, but the positive effects are often long-lasting. Who can provide psychological treatments? Psychiatrists can provide psychological treatments to people with mental illness. Find a psychiatrist near you who can provide psychological treatments Psychologists, some GPs, social workers, mental health nurses, counsellors and other therapists also offer psychological treatments.

First steps to get help Not all people who offer psychological treatments have professional training or experience in that therapy. Types of psychological treatment There are different types of psychological treatments designed to help with different issues.

Some of the most common treatments are listed below in alphabetical order :. Acceptance and commitment therapy. CBT is often used to treat depression and anxiety. The skills I learned were invaluable to put things in perspective during an anxiety attack. It posits an inherent human capacity to maximize potential. These methods focus exclusively on behaviors, or on behaviors in combination with thoughts and feelings that might be causing them.

Those who practice behavioral therapy tend to look more at specific, learned behaviors and how the environment has an impact on those behaviors. Two primary types include operant conditioning and classical conditioning. Cognitive therapy seeks to identify maladaptive cognitions thoughts , appraisals, beliefs, and reactions, with the aim of influencing destructive negative emotions.

CBT combines cognitive therapy and behavioral therapy to address maladaptive cognitions as well as dysfunctional behaviors. In this type of therapy, one or more therapists treat a small group of clients together as a group.

There are a number of other approaches to psychotherapy as well. For instance, eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing EMDR alleviates symptoms for individuals who have experienced severe trauma. Body-centered therapies focus on the links between the mind and the body in order to access greater awareness of the physical body and the emotions. A distinction can be made between those psychotherapies that employ a medical model and those that employ a humanistic model.

In the medical model, the client is seen as unwell and the therapist employs their skill to help the client regain health. The humanistic or non-medical model, in contrast, strives to depathologize the human condition. Large-scale international reviews of scientific studies have concluded that psychotherapy is effective for numerous conditions. One line of research consistently finds that different forms of psychotherapy show similar effectiveness.

Further analyses seek to identify the factors that various psychotherapies have in common that seem to account for this; for example, the quality of the therapeutic relationship, the interpretation of the problem, and the confrontation of painful emotions.

However, specific therapies have been tested for use with specific disorders, and regulatory organizations in both the UK and the US make recommendations for different conditions. The Helsinki psychotherapy study was one of several large long-term clinical trials of psychotherapies that have taken place.

Anxious and depressed patients in two short-term therapies solution-focused and brief psychodynamic improved faster, but after five years, long-term psychotherapy and psychoanalysis gave greater benefits. Several patient and therapist factors appear to predict suitability for different psychotherapies. Some are skeptical of the healing power of a psychotherapeutic relationship. Some dismiss psychotherapy altogether in favor of biomedical treatments. Others have pointed out ways in which the values and techniques of therapists can be harmful as well as helpful to clients or people clients are in relationships with—critics point out that people have, after all, been weathering crises long before psychotherapy was introduced.

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 various methods to help someone overcome personal problems, or to attain personal growth. Biomedical therapies approach psychological disorders as having biological causes and focus on eliminating or alleviating symptoms of psychological disorders.

The mind and body are viewed as connected; poor physical health leads to poor mental health, and vice versa. Biomedical therapies and psychotherapy are often used in conjunction with one another to treat the whole person. Not all individuals will require biomedical therapy; however, for some, biomedical approaches can help enhance the effectiveness of psychotherapeutic approaches.

Medications exist in four classes: antipsychotics, antidepressants, anti-cycling agents, and hypnoanxiolytics. Once the medication is discontinued, symptoms often return; however, prolonged use can lead to other problems. Different types and classes of medications are prescribed for different disorders. A depressed person might be given an antidepressant, a bipolar individual might be given a mood stabilizer, and a schizophrenic individual might be given an antipsychotic.

These medications treat the symptoms of a psychological disorder; they can help people feel better so that they can function on a daily basis, but they do not cure the disorder. Some people may only need to take a psychotropic medication for a short period of time. Others, with severe disorders like bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, may need to take psychotropic medication continuously for effective symptom management.

Antidepressants : Biomedical therapies, such as the use of the antidepressant Zoloft, can be effective in reducing the symptoms of individuals with certain mental illnesses so that psychotherapeutic interventions can be more effective. It involves using an electrical current to induce seizures in the brain in order to help alleviate the effects of certain mental conditions, such as severe forms of depression or bipolar disorder.

A more recent alternative to ECT is transcranial magnetic stimulation TMS , a procedure approved by the FDA in that uses magnetic fields to stimulate nerve cells in the brain to improve depression symptoms; like ECT, it is used when other treatments have not worked Mayo Clinic, Psychosurgery, also called neurosurgery for mental disorder NMD , is the neurosurgical treatment of mental illness. Psychosurgery has always been a controversial medical field. Some countries have abandoned psychosurgery altogether; in others the US and the UK, for example it is only used in a few centers on small numbers of people with depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder OCD.

Tricyclic antidepressants Heterocyclic including tricyclic antidepressants Agomelatine, a new type of antidepressant, is a possible treatment for major depressive episodes. However, these drugs may be used if people also have a disorder causing chronic pain that interferes with activities and work. Tricyclic antidepressants can help relieve certain kinds of pain. Monoamine oxidase inhibitors Monoamine oxidase inhibitors MAOIs Agomelatine, a new type of antidepressant, is a possible treatment for major depressive episodes.

Older antipsychotic drugs Antipsychotic drugs Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by loss of contact with reality psychosis , hallucinations usually, hearing voices , firmly held false beliefs delusions , abnormal thinking Newer antipsychotic drugs commonly called atypical or 2nd-generation antipsychotics are now commonly used as initial treatment.

Newer antipsychotic drugs include aripiprazole , asenapine, cariprazine , lurasidone , olanzapine , quetiapine , risperidone , and ziprasidone. For people who do not respond to other antipsychotic drugs, clozapine is being increasingly used. It is also present in a wide range of psychiatric disorders, including generalized anxiety disorder, Mood stabilizers, such as lithium Lithium In bipolar disorder formerly called manic-depressive illness , episodes of depression alternate with episodes of mania or a less severe form of mania called hypomania.

Mania is characterized Also, several antipsychotic drugs can be used to treat bipolar disorder. They include aripiprazole , asenapine, cariprazine , lurasidone , olanzapine , quetiapine , risperidone , and ziprasidone.

For electroconvulsive therapy, electrodes are placed on the head, and while the person is under anesthesia, a series of electrical shocks are delivered to the brain to induce a brief seizure. This therapy has consistently been shown to be the most effective treatment for severe depression. Many people treated with electroconvulsive therapy experience temporary memory loss. However, contrary to its portrayal in the media, electroconvulsive therapy is safe and rarely causes any other complications.

The modern use of anesthetics and muscle relaxants has greatly reduced any risk. Other therapies that stimulate the brain, such as repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation and vagus nerve stimulation Stimulation of the vagus nerve In seizure disorders, the brain's electrical activity is periodically disturbed, resulting in some degree of temporary brain dysfunction.

Many people have unusual sensations just before a seizure These therapies involve activating or stimulating the brain directly with magnets or implants that stimulate the vagus nerve. The stimulated cells are thought to release chemical messengers neurotransmitters , which help regulate mood and may thus relieve symptoms of depression. In recent years, significant advances have been made in the field of psychotherapy, which is sometimes referred to as talk therapy.

By creating an empathetic and accepting atmosphere, the therapist often is able to help the person identify the source of the problems and consider alternatives for dealing with them. FAQs What are the different types of mental health professionals? Where can I go to find a support group? Where can I go to find inpatient care? Where can I go to find other local services? Where can I go to find therapy? Where can I learn about types of mental health treatment? Where can I learn more information about clinical trials?

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