Four Therapies PY1

PSYCHOSURGERY

• A surgery performed on the brain.
• Aim to treat mental disorders.
• Involves destroying parts of the brain or severing fibres so that target areas of the brain so that are separated and are functionally removed.

Prefrontal Labotomy

• Surgical procedure involving selective destruction of nerve fibres.
• used on frontal lobe of the brain, the area that is thought to control impulse and mood regulation.
• used to treat mental illnesses such as obsessive compulsive order, depression and less successfully schizophrenia.
• The severity of the illness was more important than the type.

History

• used in ancient times called Trepanning when they drilled 4cm holes with a circular drill to release evil spirits.(40000 years ago)
• 40s and 50's Egas Moniz found that monkeys with aggressive tendancies were cured when there frontal lobe had been separated.
• He developed same opperation for humans
• 50,000 lobotamies been performed but the extreme side effects out weighed the advantages and when psychoactive drugs were introduced the operation became unfashionable.

Aversion Therapy

• A form of psychotherapy used to reduce or avoid an undesirable behaviour pattern.
• Aim is to condition the patient to associate the undesirable behaviour with an undesirable stimulus.
• This leads to a suppression of the behaviour.
• Used to treat drug abuse, alcoholism and in the past homosexuality.(1967)
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How it works

• Patients are repetedely presented with an unpleasent stimulus such as an electric shock or being sick.
• At the same time they are engaging in the undesirable behaviour.
• The unpleasent stimulus is the unconditioned stimulus.Tis produces an unconditioned response(being sick.)
• When the unpleasent behaviour is repeatedly paired with th UCS the behaviour becomes conditioned.
• Patients lose their wish to engage in the undesirable behaviour.

Dream analysis

• The unconcious mind expresses itself through dreams.
• dream analysis ia the process of assigning meanings to a dream.
• The ID is the source of the unconscious impulses, it is also the source of wishes and fantasies.
• The ID is associated with irrational , instinct-driven unconcious thoughts called primary-process thought.
• This form of thought is unnacceptable in adult minds so are repressed to our dreams.
• Freud believed that dreams were the unconcious fulfilment of wishes.(Wish fulfillment)
• Content of dreams expressed symbolically.

• The real meaning of a dream is the latent content but it is transformed into secret images called the manifest content wich is the dream you actual experience.
• dreamwork is the process of latent content being transformed into the manifest content.
• Condensation is when dreams are rich in detail and content but they are condensed to brief images in a dream.
• Displacement - A dream objects emotional significance is separated from its real object or significance.
• Representation-A thought is translated into visual images.
• Symbolism-A symbol replaces an action, person or idea.
• Secondary elaboration-The unconsious mind collects lots of different images and ties them together to form a logical story.

Evidence

• Solms(2000) used a PET scan to highlight the regions of the brain that are active during dreaming, it showed that when rational parts of the brain are inactive during rapid eye movement during sleep where as the forebrain concerned with memory and motivation is very active.

CBT

• Used to treat a wide range of different mental disorders as well as for normal problams such as marriage guidance.
• Cost effective therapy takes short amount of time between 16-20 sessions.
• Involes both the cognitive and behavioural approach.
• Key influences of behaviour is how an individual thinks about a situation.
• Aims to change unwanted thoughts and beliefs.
• CBT challenges the negative thoughts and replaces them with new more constructive thoughts.
• Cognitive therapists are not interested in the original source of the irrational thoughts.
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Research evidence

• David and Avellino(2003) CBT highest overall successrate of all the therapies.