In light of the differences between the various psychological disorders and their hypothesized etiologies, it would seem that for each disorder, a particular type of therapy might work best. Discuss this notion, and give examples using specific disorders and specific approaches to therapy to support your arguments
What will be an ideal response?
This proposition makes sense, and there is some evidence to support it. A related point is that the symptoms of some disorders probably mean particular therapies are better suited to treat them. Here are some points that might be included in good answers.
To the extent that biological factors have been shown to be involved in the etiology of a disorder, it would seem that biomedical treatments ought to be most effective. And, in fact, biomedical treatments have been more effective than insight and behavior therapies in treating especially the more severe disorders, such as schizophrenia and some mood disorders for which there is significant evidence for biological causes.
Insight therapies work best for clients who are highly motivated and who have positive attitudes about therapy. This would seem to eliminate depressed individuals as good candidates for insight therapies. Sufferers from the anxiety disorders seem to best fit the description of ideal candidates for insight therapy.
Behavior therapies have been successful with a wide variety of disorders. This is probably because most disorders manifest in maladaptive behaviors, and if these behaviors can be targeted specifically enough to design a behavior modification program, then the prognosis may be good. Behavior therapy would likely be least successful when the undesirable behavior is pervasive, vague, and hard to pinpoint. This may be the case with some of the anxiety disorders and some of the mood disorders.
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Between the two types of competitiveness identified by researchers, competing to excel (CE):
a. is linked to feelings of loneliness. c. is linked to having a low self-esteem. b. deals with a need to dominate others. d. deals with surpassing one's personal goals.
An experimenter conducts an experiment on the effects of a drug to control hallucinations. The experimenter declares the results to be "statistically significant," which means that
a. even though appropriate statistics were used, no differences could be detected between the experimental and control groups. b. the results have important implications for theory or practice. c. differences of this size between the experimental and control groups would occur by chance only five times out of 100 (or less). d. differences between the experimental and control groups were so large they could never occur by chance alone.
A person trapped in a hotel fire 20 stories from the ground has the choice of jumping from the window to a sure death or dashing through the flames and almost surely dying of smoke inhalation and burns. This person
a. is experiencing a traumatic approach-avoidance conflict. b. will most likely freeze, finding it impossible to decide or to take action. c. will most likely deal with this conflict by "leaving the field.". d. will most likely cope with this situation using displacement or sublimation.
Which of the following does not play a critical role in growth?
a. thyroxine c. androgen b. adrenalin d. hormones