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Jussara Tavares I Taunton
Analyse the effectiveness of a range of treatments and therapies used to treat mental health disorders - 1933
This essay will demonstrate knowledge on the basis assumptions and effectiveness of treatments and therapies for psychological disorders and recognise key research in the study of treatments.
Psychoanalysis therapies are based on the approach of Freud (cited in Saul McLeod, 2018), mental health illness and the treatments. The aim of psychoanalysis therapy is to release repressed emotions and experiences, i.e., make the unconscious conscious. Freud developed psychoanalysis which is a psychotherapy method aiming to bring the unconscious and repressed conflicts into consciousness. Various psychoanalytical techniques include, dream analysis, free association, transference, to help patient recover and gain insight into the repressed conflicts. Psychoanalytic psychologists see psychological problems as rooted in the unconscious mind where manifest symptoms are caused by hidden disturbances. Typical causes include unresolved issues during development or repressed trauma cited in Saul McLeod, 2018.
Anxiety disorders such as phobias, panic attacks, obsessive-compulsive disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder are obvious areas where psychoanalysis might be assumed to work. The aim is to assist the client in coming to terms with their own id impulses or to recognize the origin of their current anxiety in childhood relationships that are being relived in adulthood. Svartberg and Stiles (cited by SaulMcLeod, 2007) and Prochaska and DiClemente (cited by SaulMcLeod, 2007) point out that the evidence for its effectiveness is equivocal.
Salzman (cited in Lawton, 2012) suggests that psychodynamic therapies generally are of little help to clients with specific anxiety disorders such as phobias or OCDs but may be of more help with general anxiety disorders. Salzman (cited in Lawton, 2012) in fact expresses concerns that psychoanalysis may increase the symptoms of OCDs because of the tendency of such clients to be overly concerned with their actions and to ruminate on their plight.
The appropriateness of psychoanalysis is that Freud introduced the notion that mental illness may result from a psychological cause and psychoanalysis may be the form of treatment. This point is supported by research which has been done over the years to show the effectiveness of this treatment. Freud (cited in Mark Kelland, 2015), used it successfully for his own patients but the evidence of the patients ‘cure’ is debatable as this theory was based on a small sample of neurotic, middle class Jewish women who were living in the patriarchal society of Vienna at the start of the 20th Century and disputes have emerged whether therapy works or not. Eysenck (1980) claimed that psychoanalysis was far less effective than mixed therapies. In his research results, 40 per cent psychoanalytic patients improved following therapy and 64 per cent receiv...
