Many people around the world suffer from depression, anxiety, and other disorders such as mood disorders and social anxiety disorders. These psychological conditions can significantly affect your ability to perform basic daily activities. Psychological conditions can lead to a decline in self-care, and their impact can progressively become worse and lead to suicidal thoughts or suicide attempts.
Each year about 40 million or 18.1% of adults aged 18 and older fall victim to anxiety disorders in the US, according to the Anxiety & Depression Association of America, and only 36% receive treatment. While panic disorders affect 6 million, or 2.7%, social anxiety disorders affect 15 million, or 6.8% of the US population. In addition, obsessive-compulsive disorder impacts 2.2 million, or 1.0% of the people, and post-traumatic stress disorder impacts 7.7 million, or 3.5% of the US population. As more people are affected each year, psychological disorders are becoming a cause for concern as these disorders can make your life very difficult and stressful.
Impact of Psychological Disorders
Psychological problems can have a considerable impact on your behavior and life choices. Your emotional and physical health is compromised. Your ability to reason diminishes. Consequently, you can’t enjoy your life, and this unhappiness leads to withdrawal and social isolation. The resulting relationship issues and family conflicts further strain your mental faculties. Accordingly, you lose interest in school or work.
A common response to psychological problems is indulgence in alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs. This substance abuse aggravates the condition and leads to further isolation and mental anguish. Eventually, financial issues and suicidal and homicidal thoughts take over.
However, to overcome substance abuse, you can now ease your journey to recovery by joining health groups and rehabilitation centers such as the Delphi Health Group and increase your chances of a safe recovery. A comforting prospect is that psychological disorders patients can access a range of therapies that can help overcome the debilitating effects of emotional and psychological problems.
It is necessary to get proper treatment to overcome psychological problems and mental illnesses. We have listed four successful treatments that can give relief and heal patients with psychological disorders.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
People with psychological disorders can opt for cognitive behavioral therapy, also known as CBT. It is a psychotherapeutic process that helps the patient identify and fight destructive and intrusive thoughts that trigger their abusive patterns and habits.
This treatment focuses on shifting the mindset and helps fight intrusive thoughts that can negatively impact your mood. Through this treatment, such emotions, behaviors, and habits are identified and removed with rational and conscientious behavior and beliefs. CBT involves various techniques to cater to a diverse range of patients with various emotional and behavioral problems. There are many types of cognitive-behavioral therapies, such as:
- Dialectical behavior therapy
This therapy manages the thoughts and behaviors of a patient by recognizing destructive habits and helping them handle and eradicate them through mindfulness.
- Multimodal therapy
This type of CBT addresses the patient’s psychological issues through seven distinct but interconnected modalities that are:
- Sensation
- Imagery
- Affect
- Cognition
- Behavior
- Interpersonal factors
- Drug consideration
- Rational emotive behavior therapy
This type of CBT manages the patients’ irrational beliefs, identifying them and teaching them to fight and let go of their faulty beliefs.
Psychoanalytic therapy
People who have been through childhood trauma can consider psychoanalytic therapy. Psychologists developed treatment methodologies using the theories of psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud. It is a type of talk therapy in which patients meet their psychoanalyst once a week. Patients can undergo treatment for months or even years, depending on the severity of their psychological disorder.
Psychoanalytical therapy aims to understand how the unconscious mind controls behavior, emotions, and thoughts. The therapy’s main focus is to scrutinize how childhood experiences may contribute to the current feelings and actions one is facing.
Psychoanalysts use a wide range of techniques to understand the problem better. A few of their methods include:
- Free association
Free association is an exercise that allows patients to freely share their emotions and thoughts, which helps them find unforeseen connections between memories and current behavior.
- Dream interpretation
Dream interpretation is considered a vital psychoanalytic technique in which psychoanalysts will interpret dreams and try to find greater meaning in them to understand the unconscious mind more.
- Transference
Transference is a technique in which the patient projects their feeling about a certain person onto the psychoanalysts. The patient will interpret with the psychoanalyst as if they are that person. This technique helps the psychoanalyst examine and understand how the patient interacts with others.
Integrative therapy
Integrative therapy fights the idea that “one size fits all” and promotes the integration of various factors and tools to help patients heal. The basis of the treatment is the belief that every person is unique, and no one formula will help lead everyone to recovery. The psychologist develops a program that suits the patient’s psychological problems and personal needs.
It aims to understand and reach the root cause of the phycological problems in the patient and help them live life productively. One of the most vital parts of this therapy is the patient-therapist relationship; the therapist needs to be understanding and unbiased and see the patient as their equal.
Humanistic therapy
Humanistic therapy focuses on the good qualities in a person rather than only concentrating on the problem in them. The treatment believes in personal potential and abilities; therefore, it encourages people to overcome their psychological issues through personal growth and healing.
Humanistic therapy comes from humanistic psychology, which emphasizes the principle that people are inherently good. It encourages people to see others as a whole, believing that everything is interconnected. Furthermore, the therapy focuses on personal skills and good characteristics to help people heal and find personal satisfaction.
Moreover, there are various kinds of humanistic therapies, such as:
- Existential therapy
Existential therapy helps patients understand their place and purpose in the universe. The therapy sessions have a more conceptual approach and help bring meaning into the patient’s life. The therapy also helps patients take responsibility for their actions and makes them understand that they have the power to turn their life around.
- Client-centered therapy
Client-centered therapy is talk therapy in which the patient acts as an equal while the therapist hears them out with empathy and without any judgment.
- Gestalt therapy
Gestalt therapy encourages looking at the patient’s state and life rather than looking back into their past. It promotes a sense of accountability and responsibility for their actions in life.
Conclusion
We now understand the difficulties that psychological disorders can bring into a person’s life. At times it can make life difficult to the point that it can become unmanageable. So, if you know anyone dealing with psychological issues, speak to them, support them, and ask them to seek proper treatment.
Without effective treatment and therapies, disorders can become very dangerous for individuals, their families, friends, and colleagues. Therefore, it is necessary to opt for a treatment that better suits their conditions to find their road to recovery.
