Exam 17: Treatment of Psychological Disorders

One of your patients is suffering from a severe disorder and nothing else has worked. Consequently, you recommend electroconvulsive therapy. Most likely, your patient was suffering from

Your therapist focuses on modelling as an effective treatment technique. What kind of therapy is she using?

A clinical researcher is particularly interested in learning whether systematic desensitization is more or less effective with particular people suffering from anxiety. To do this, he collects personality measures from people receiving this treatment and looks to see whether certain personality traits are associated with the effectiveness of the outcome. With regard to the "specificity question," this study is most concerned with studying the importance of

A client is being treated for depression after a breakup with a partner. The therapist points out that the thoughts, and not the situation itself, cause the client maladaptive emotional reactions such as depression. This information suggests that the client's therapist practices _______ therapy.

You overhear two psychopharmacologists arguing about the relative pros and cons associated with drug therapies targeting depression and anxiety. One of them makes reference to a type of drug that has the potential to lead to dangerous changes in blood pressure when taken in conjunction with the consumption of certain kinds of foods. What kind of drug are they referring to?

In order to reduce the effects of psychological disorders, prevention might include

Helping people achieve greater insight, which is an awareness of the underlying dynamics of their problems, is the primary therapeutic goal of ________________________.

Injecting alcoholics with a drug that makes the ingestion of alcohol cause nausea is an example of ________.

Under what conditions is punishment used as a behaviour modification technique? What evidence is there for its effectiveness?

Your doctor has just prescribed a new drug for the treatment of your mental disorder. You're not sure what exactly the drug does, but you know it effectively lowers the level of GABA. Most likely, you are suffering from

Gestalt therapy is very directive. But if you had to classify it, Gestalt therapy is really a form of

The assumptions that psychological disorders are learned in exactly the same ways as normal behaviours and that they can be treated by applying the basic principles of learning is typical of the _____________ approach to therapy.

In this therapy, a previously positive conditioned stimulus (CS) is paired with a noxious unconditioned stimulus in an attempt to eliminate the undesirable behaviour evoked by the CS. This is

What is a cingulotomy and with what disorders is it used?

Hans Eysenck analyzed data collected from health insurance companies and concluded that it provided clear empirical support for the validity of psychotherapy.

Ursula has been feeling very anxious for over a month now, so much so that she is finding it difficult to get her work finished on time and hard to meet her social obligations. Although Ursula knows that psychotherapy works, what she wants to know is what kind of therapist she should see for the problems she is experiencing. Ideally, Ursula would like the answer to

A treatment developed specifically for the treatment of borderline personality disorder is

Beck's cognitive therapy has proved to be effective for the treatment of ________.

Jerry is working with a therapist to get over his depression. The therapist points out how most of his depressive feelings appear to be produced by thoughts such as, "because my boss doesn't like me, I will never get promoted!" The therapist helps Jerry to identify when this previously automatic thought is present and suggests that he come up with some way of challenging this conclusion. Jerry most likely has a therapist who is using

What is the "specificity question" and how is it used in modern psychotherapy research? If you were interested in designing a study to examine the effectiveness of a new treatment for depression, what are some different ways that you could assess the effectiveness of your treatment?