The favoured treatment route for any mental health disorder or emotional challenge is medication and psychotherapy or a combination of both. While both these are decided by the attending psychiatrist, it is always good to understand what are the different types of psychotherapies available, how do they work and who do they benefit.
Psychotherapies are essentially talk therapies. These can help overcome mental health disorders and emotional challenges by mitigating symptoms and improving quality of life. Psychotherapies can either be used in their individual capacities or can be combined with other similar interventions for a more powerful impact. The most common types of psychotherapies used are as follows:
Behavioural therapy
Behavioral therapy lays emphasis on the present. It reinforces positive behavior patterns by rewarding the person practicing these. It also promotes the idea of facing consequences for negative or disagreeable behavior patterns. The therapy does not dwell on the reason for a particular type of behavior instead, it centers around removing barriers that make changing the pattern difficult.
Behavioral therapy can be further categorized into the following types:
- Systematic desensitization: During this therapy variant, the patient is gradually subjected to their object of fear. For example, if a patient is scared of lizards, then they are trained to overcome their fear.
- Aversion therapy: This is used to overcome undesirable habits, like biting nails, by creating a consequence for it.
- Flooding: This therapy variant exposes the patient to the object of their fear so that they can process all their feelings in one go.
Behavioral therapy is a good treatment option for patients suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder, different types of phobias, and substance use disorders (SUD).
Dialectical behavioural therapy
The primary tenant of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) is to discuss ideas and goals with the intention of learning effective ways to deal with emotional challenges. Regular committed sessions of DBT help regulate emotions and develop mindfulness and interpersonal skills.
This therapy was originally developed to treat borderline personality disorder. Gradually, it was observed that the therapy worked well for those mental health patients who experienced a total breakdown of emotions. It also worked well for people having suicide ideation and self-harm tendencies.
Cognitive behavioral therapy
Cognitive behavior therapy or CBT is based on the hypothesis that human thoughts, feelings, and behavior are connected. It uses the concepts of behavioral therapy to replace one’s automatic negative responses with positive reactions. The therapeutic approach works on identifying challenges and negative thoughts and slowly changing them into more helpful and positive behaviors.
People suffering from mood disorders, eating disorders, anxiety and OCD benefit from CBT.
Psychodynamic therapy
This therapy believes that human behavior and mood are impacted by unconscious beliefs. Most often than not, these beliefs are set in childhood. Therefore, the goal of the therapy is to identify unconscious beliefs to understand a person’s behavior and mood. Based on this, experts work towards making the individual understand themselves so that they can also understand their moods and behavior and change accordingly.
The therapy works well for issues with confidence, expression and esteem. It also works well in conjunction with other therapies for those who have depression and/or anxiety.
Humanistic therapy
This kind of therapy focuses on individual strengths. The session style of this therapy is unstructured with discussions mainly on issues related to one’s beliefs, tolerance and acceptance. Experts believe that individuals indulging in this therapy can understand their own views while truly accepting their selves.
This therapy works well for patients of depression and/or anxiety and for those people who have confidence and relationship issues.
The road ahead
Some conditions that often need professional help at a credible residential mental health rehab center include persistent feelings of hopelessness and exhaustion, unmanaged stress, feeling overwhelmed and drained, anxious, getting panic attacks, or feeling low and disinterested in life.
If any of the above mentioned conditions or feelings have been troubling you for more than a month, then seek professional help immediately. An RCI licensed clinical psychologist can help assess your symptoms and provide an accurate diagnosis. To book an appointment call our 24/7/365 helpline 9289086193.
