Psychotherapy as a treatment method and its indications

Definition of psychotherapy

 * Psychotherapy is the use of psychological methods to assist people to modify undesirable emotions, attitudes, and behaviors.

The psychotherapeutic process

 * Assess the necessity for it
 * the actual therapeutic work
 * conclusion of psychotherapy: important to prevent relapses

According to the method *

 * Psychodynamic psychotherapy
 * Supportive psychotherapy
 * Interpersonal therapy
 * Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT)
 * Dialectical behavioral therapy
 * Motivational Interviewing

* this list is not exhaustive

According to time

 * short-term, long-term

According to group size

 * individual, group, institutional therapy (within an institution)

Indications of psychotherapy

 * The choice of psychotherapy depends on the patient situation (i.e. the mental disorder) and the availability

Example CBT


 * It is a combination of cognitive and behavioral therapy


 * Indications: OCD, Phobias, Substance-use disorder, Depressive disorder, Anxiety disorders, Trauma-related disorders, Eating disorders, Schizphrenia
 * Principle: The principle is to identify maladaptive thoughts and behaviors and find ways how to deal with them


 * Conditioning: Classical or operant conditioning


 * Deconditioning
 * Example Agoraphobia and desensitization: Patients fear certain situations, in which they perceive that they are unable to escape from or get help. These include spaces such as public buses, malls, schools. Such patients in the most extreme forms can become house-bound, because they are afraid of everything outside.
 * A way of CBT would include to analyze these maladaptive thoughts and via progresssive desentization enable the patient to leave the house
 * -> "First imagine, that you are infront of your house (..) How do you feel? " -> Patient opens the door and goes outside for 30 seconds -> Patient goes together with his/her spouse to the street and sits there for 5 min -> etc.