Psychotherapy

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.

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.

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

The ancient role of conscience as a moral pilot is rejuvenated, and its neglected function as a spiritual daemon is refurbished for more psychologically minded modern readers.

There is currently a small but impressive evidence base that shows that psychological and interpersonal factors play a pivotal role in pharmacological treatment responsiveness.

Although several studies indicate that psychotherapy (alone or in combination with medications) can help psychiatric patients reach recovery faster and stay well longer, a declining number of office-based psychiatrists are providing psychotherapy to their patients.

Unipolar major depressive disorder is a debilitating condition with a lifetime prevalence of 17%. Recent epidemiological evidence indicates that MDD is the fourth leading cause of disease burden and the leading cause of disability-adjusted life years.

Agitation in older adults is frequently associated with multiple psychiatric and medical conditions and comorbidities. It commonly occurs in patients with anxiety, affective illness, psychosis, dementia, stroke, brain injury, delirium, or pain.

The practice of one human being helping another to feel better through the use of talk is as old as humanity itself. As a profession, however, psychiatry has existed for only 100 years.

Both cognitive-behavioral and pharmacological treatments for panic disorder have been found to be effective over the short term. Not all patients, however, can tolerate or fully respond to these approaches, and the effectiveness of these interventions over the long term remains unclear.

Although cognitive therapy (CT) is the best-studied form of psychotherapy, its effectivenes compared with antidepressant medication remains controversial. Over the years, there has been some variability in the results of randomized controlled trials and other types of clinical trials, as well as meta-analyses.

CBT is a comprehensive system of therapy that builds on core therapeutic values by using a wide range of reliable methods to produce cognitive and behavioral change.

Becoming more creative and improvising have certain dynamics that can be used by therapists in fostering a more healing process. Playfulness, imagination, dialogue, skill-building, narrative, inspiration and integration can all be employed in clinical settings. These tools create an environment where spontaneity can arise, anxiety is reduced, and patients are more receptive to their own intuition.

The issue for us is whether positive thinking is relevant in certain situations. Would it help, or would it create more problems than it would solve?

Nonverbal cues speak just as loudly as words. How can video be used to capture these subtle cues and help patients make progress in therapy?

Once the distortions are cleared away, most patients who come to the emergency room tell stories that seem to grow out of the problems they claim to have and the pain they claim to feel.

It is now customary psychiatric practice to think of a patient's illness as primarily biological in origin-so much so that, for many illnesses, published practice guidelines almost exclusively describe medication strategies.