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Psychotherapy - basic characteristics
1. verbal interaction between therapist & client
2. development of a supportive relationship in which a client can bring up & discuss traumatic or bothersome experiences that may have led to current problems
3. analysis of the client’s experiences &/or suggested ways for the client to deal with or overcome his or her problems
Early Treatments
• From 1400 to 1700, people who today would be diagnosed as schizophrenics were considered insane & called lunatics. In the late 1700s, Dr. Benjamin Rush, (considered the father of American Psychiatry), developed the “tranquilizing chair.
Reform Movements
• Moral therapy became popular in the early 1800s. It held the belief that mental patients could be helped to function better by providing humane treatment in a relaxed & decent environment. Moral therapy was abandoned late 1800s. Mental facilities begin to resemble human snake pits.
• In the 1930s, Sigmund Freud developed psychoanalysis.
• Until the early 1950s, wretched conditions & inhumane treatment of patients persisted; however, in the mid 1950s, two dramatic changes happened:
1. discovery of antipsychotic drugs,
2. development of community mental health centers.
Phenothiazines, Deinstitutionalization & Community mental health centers.
• Phenothiazines werediscovered in the early 1950s, they block or reduce the effects of the neurotransmitter dopamine and reduce schizophrenic symptoms, such as delusions and hallucinations. Chlorpromazine (Thorazine) was the first important typical neuroleptic.
• Deinstitutionalization refers to the release of mental patients from mental hospitals and their return to the community to develop more independent and fulfilling lives. A result of the introduction of phenptiazines.
• Community Mental Health Centers offer low-cost or free mental health care to members of the surrounding community, especially the underprivileged. They provide briefer forms of therapy that are needed in emergencies & focus on the early detection and prevention of psychological problems.
General Psychology
Robert C. Gates
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