Behavior Therapies

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Behavior Therapies

The treatment of disorders (can be either mental or physical) by the use of either psychological needs or by the use of medicinal needs is called therapy. Therapy involves talking with a trained professional about things such as symptoms, problems, and understanding one's self.

Therapists help patients in many ways:

· Help patients understand and cope with their illnesses.

· Empathize with their patients and help them understand why they behave the way they do.

· Help patients make positive changes by discussing their past behavior.

· Help patients discover why they think certain thoughts and how these thoughts affect their feelings.

· Help patients to identify and repair problems with relationships.

There are many different kinds of therapies. The important ones are explained below.

Behavior therapy: this focuses on what you do. This type of therapy works particularly well for problems in which certain maladaptive anxiety-causing behaviors recur such as phobias, anxiety disorders, obsessive compulsive disorders, drug and alcohol abuse and eating disorders.

The therapy is accomplished by reinforcing positive behavior and extinguishing negative ones. Some common types of behavior therapy are:

· Systematic Desensitization- by approaching the situation associated with a great deal of anxiety in steps, the patient can gradually decrease the anxiety related to it. This process usually contained three steps- relaxation techniques (which includes breathing exercises, mental imagery and biofeedback), Creating a Hierarchy (The therapist creates a series of situations in which the feared event occurs more and more intensely) and finally desensitization (where the patient can finally handle the m...

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...ressful situations more positively, therapists work with patients to develop insight into the reasons or causes behind their problems, which can help them, develop more adaptive behavior to cope with them. It is geared toward shorter-term treatment.

Bibliography:

Bibliography:

www.health-center.com

www.geocities.com/~modularforms/trich/cognitive.html

camden-nt1.rutgers.edu/hart/intro/therapy/sld005.htm

Gelfand, D. M., Jenson, W. R. & Drew, C. J. (1988). Understanding child behavior Disorders. (2nd ed.). Chicago: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.

Whalen, C. K., Henker, B. & Hinshaw, S. P. (1985). Cognitive-behavior therapies for hyperactive children: Premises, problems, and prospects. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 13, 391-410.

Theories of Behavior Therapy- Exploring Behavior Change; edited by William O'Donohue and Leonard Krasner

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