Antisocial Personality Disord... : Treatments

Antisocial personality disorder is one of the most difficult personality disorders to treat. People with this condition rarely seek treatment on their own. They may only start therapy when required to by a court. The effectiveness of treatment for...

Antisocial personality disorder is highly unresponsive to any form of treatment, in part because persons with APD rarely seek treatment voluntarily. If they do seek help, it is usually in an attempt to find relief from depression or other forms of...

The most important goals of treating antisocial behavior are to measure and describe the individual child's or adolescent's actual problem behaviors and to effectively teach him or her the positive behaviors that should be adopted instead. In seve...

Antisocial personality disorder is highly unresponsive to any form of treatment. Although there are medications available that could quell some of the symptoms of the disorder, noncompliance or abuse of the drugs prevents their widespread use. The...

A therapeutic approach based on the principle that maladaptive moods and behavior can be changed by replacing distorted or inappropriate ways of thinking with thought patterns that are healthier and more realistic. Cognitive therapy is an approach to psychotherapy that uses thought patterns to change moods and behaviors. Pioneers in the development of cognitive behavior therapy include Albert Ellis (1929-), who developed rational-emotive therapy (RET) in the 1950s, and Aaron Beck (1921—), whose cognitive therapy has been widely used for depression and anxiety. Cognitive behavior therapy has become increasingly popular since the 1970s. Growing numbers of therapists have come to believe that their patients' cognitive processes play an important role in determining the effectiveness of treatment. Currently, almost 70% of the members of the Association for the Advancement of Behavior Therapy identify themselves as cognitive behaviorists. Like behavior therapy, cognitive behavior therapy tends to be short-term (often between 10 and 20 sessions), and it focuses on the client's present situation in contrast to the emphasis on past history that is a prominent feature of Freudian psychoanalysis and other psychodynamically oriented therapies. The therapeutic process begins with identification of distorted perceptions and thought patterns that are causing or contributing to the client's problems, often through detailed record keeping by the client. Some self-defeating ways of thinking identified by Aaron Beck include all-or-nothing thinking; magnifying or minimizing the importance of an event; overgeneralization (drawing extensive conclusions from a single event); personalization (taking things too personally); selective abstraction (giving disproportionate weight to negative events); arbitrary inference (drawing illogical conclusions from an event); and automatic thoughts (habitual negative, scolding thoughts such as "You can't do anything right"). Once negative ways of thinking have been identified, the therapist helps the client work on replacing them with more adaptive ones. This process involves a repertoire of techniques, including self-evaluation, positive self-talk, control of negative thoughts and feelings, and accurate assessment of both external situations and of the client's own emotional state. Clients practice these techniques alone, with the therapist, and also, wherever possible, in the actual settings in which stressful situations occur (in vivo), gradually building up confidence in their ability to cope with difficult situations successfully by breaking out of dysfunctional patterns of response. Today cognitive behavior therapy is widely used with children and adolescents, especially for disorders involving anxiety, depression, or problems with social skills. Like adult clients, children undergoing cognitive behavior therapy are made aware of distorted perceptions and errors in logic that are responsible for inaccurate or unrealistic views of the world around them. The therapist then works to change erroneous beliefs and perceptions by instruction, modeling, and giving the child a chance to rehearse new attitudes and responses and practice them in real-life situations. Cognitive behavior therapy has been effective in treating a variety of complaints, ranging from minor problems and developmental difficulties to severe disorders that are incurable but can be made somewhat more manageable. It is used either alone or together with other therapies and/or medication as part of an overall treatment plan. Cognitive behavioral therapy has worked especially well, often in combination with medication, for children and adolescents suffering from depression. It can help free depressed children from the pervasive feelings of helplessness and hopelessness that are supported by selfdefeating beliefs. Children in treatment are assigned to monitor their thoughts, and the therapist points out ways that these thoughts (such as "noth

Cognitive-behavioral therapy is an action-oriented form of psychosocial therapy that assumes that maladaptive, or faulty, thinking patterns cause maladaptive behavior and "negative" emotions. (Maladaptive behavior is behavior that is counter-productive or interferes with everyday living.) The treatment focuses on changing an individual's thoughts (cognitive patterns) in order to change his or her behavior and emotional state.

Cognitive therapy is a psychosocial (both psychological and social) therapy that assumes that faulty thought patterns (called cognitive patterns) cause maladaptive behavior and emotional responses. The treatment focuses on changing thoughts in order to solve psychological and personality problems. Behavior therapy is also a goal-oriented, therapeutic approach, and it treats emotional and behavioral disorders as maladaptive learned responses that can be replaced by healthier ones with appropriate training. Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) integrates features of behavior modification into the traditional cognitive restructuring approach.

Behavioral therapy can help ease panic disorder, whether in conjunction with medication or alone.

What's the difference between a can-do and a won't-try person? It's usually a matter of bravery.

Psychodynamic psychotherapy is a method of verbal communication used to help a person find relief from emotional pain. It is based on the theories and techniques of psychoanalysis . Psychodynamic psychotherapy is similar to psychoanalysis in that it attributes emotional problems to the patient's unconscious motives and conflicts. It differs from classical psychoanalysis, however, in that psychodynamic psychotherapists do not necessarily accept Freud's view that these unconscious motives and conflicts are ultimately sexual in nature.

Interpersonal therapy (IPT) is a short-term supportive psychotherapy that focuses on the connection between interactions between people and the development of a person's psychiatric symptoms.