Psychotherapy

A therapeutic alliance can serve to build a trusting relationship between clinician and patient and increase the patient’s feelings of agency and autonomy.

For now, it is encouraging to know that psychiatrists remember that they, too, are physicians first who can tap into their medical training to provide comprehensive patient care.

About a year ago, I wrote the blog “Are Dogs Man's Best Therapist?” To my surprise, it turned out to be a very popular one. Since then, dogs continue to be in the news for their therapeutic effect, including being brought to Newtown right after the mass murder there.

A multimodal treatment program that centered on a cognitive-behavioral approach using exposure and response prevention was effective in treating OCD comorbid with eating disorders.

In line with adolescents' interest in interactive video games, a computerized cognitive-behavioral therapy intervention that is an interactive fantasy game for depressed adolescents has been developed.

Despite the high prevalence of depression among youths, there are empirically supported treatments that have been shown to reduce depressogenic symptoms, including the 3 therapies outlined in this article.

Boys with ADHD can present with different cognitive and behavioral patterns than girls with ADHD. Despite these factors, girls with ADHD remain at significant psychosocial risk into adulthood.

Which CPT billing codes should you use when working with adolescents if there's a need for a clinician to meet with parents separately? Here to discuss is Dr Saundra Jain.

Dogs, indeed, may be man’s (and woman’s) best therapist at certain times and in certain situations, with important implications for mental health.

Knowing from the start how a personality is organized, especially as theorized by Karen Horney-appreciating the primary and repressed moves of the patient, inner dictates, claims, idealized image, and intrapsychic defensive maneuvers-makes the help we offer most likely to succeed.

For this psychiatrist, group therapy has proved to be an extraordinarily effective treatment for a range of mental disorders.

This article explores the use of functional analytic psychotherapy (FAP)-a behavioral, evidenced-based approach to psychotherapy that can add psychotherapeutic benefit to your existing brief approaches during medication checks.

Addressing the Underlying Causes of Treatment Resistance

For prescribing psychiatrists who want to offer treatment alternatives to patients who prefer to avoid medication, the evidence is clear that psychotherapy is an effective choice. Even in cases in which medication is accepted, the evidence suggests that psychotherapy may significantly improve patient outcomes.

A therapist forgets about a patient’s appointment. She becomes abnormally angry, unusually forgiving, atypically bored, or excessively voyeuristic. What is going on? The therapist’s countertransference is making itself known.

Psychotherapy outcomes and the mechanisms of change that are related to its effects have traditionally been investigated on the psychological and social levels, by measuring changes in symptoms, psychological abilities, personality, or social functioning.

Treatment resistance in bipolar disorder is clinically familiar but lacks a standard definition. Numerous evidence-based treatments exist for all phases of bipolar disorder, and these should be optimized and fully explored.

See if you can tell if the following quote comes from religious wisdom or a CBT therapist: “To defeat depression, you must introduce a fresh perspective to your thinking. You must begin to replace troubling, destructive thoughts with positive, constructive ones.” To this, we say, “Amen.”

The efficacy of psychodynamic psychotherapy is supported by empirical evidence. Patients have reported residual therapeutic gains following treatment.

Here is a “pocket guide” for clinicians drawn from actual cases. With some modification, the list could become a patient information sheet or office policy.

Many psychiatrists, residents, and other mental health professionals believe that psychodynamic therapy lacks empirical support or that other psychotherapies are more effective.

There is evidence that the combination of medication and psychotherapy improves outcomes for many psychiatric illnesses. Among the several forms of psychotherapy that might be considered, cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is the most extensively studied.

Our study suggests that most delusional patients, even those with high positive symptom scores, may have at least 1 RFD that precedes a clinical intervention specifically directed toward encouraging doubt. These preexisting “islands of doubt” may offer a useful foothold to begin the CBT process.

Dramatology approaches human encounters, events, and scenes as dramatic enactments of characters in conflict and crisis.

Neuroscientists are exploring ways to erase bad memories in patients who have experienced traumatic events. This possibility raises ethical concerns: Is it ethical to erase a memory or flashback and the feelings associated with that moment to alleviate suffering, or should clinicians focus on therapies such as CBT and EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) to help patients cope with a trauma?