There are two types of psychological disorders, both of which are very different:
- THE PHARMACOLOGICAL TREATMENT
- THE PSYCHOTHERAPEUTIC TREATMENT _
Pharmacotherapy
The pharmacological treatment uses, as its name indicates, the drugs. It is a symptomatic treatment; that is, it treats the symptoms. For this, he uses medications such as anxiolytics (tranquilizers), antidepressants, and neuroleptics (antipsychotics). among others. These medications alleviate the symptoms as an essential part of emotional disorders. Symptoms are indicators of the existence of a problem.
For example, if a person breaks an arm and it hurts, pain is the symptom that indicates that the arm is broken. The person will take analgesics (pain medications) to alleviate this pain, but his healing will occur if the arm is put back in its place.
Is it wrong for me to take pain medicine? The medicine won’t heal your broken arm; it’ll just remove the pain. The same thing happens when we suffer from a psychological disorder and take medication; it alleviates the symptoms, but we are not cured. In addition, psychological disorders have a psychosocial origin; that is, they depend on the person and their environment.
Imagine that I am suffering from a depressive episode because I am a person who tends to see things in a very negative way (catastrophic thinking), and I have also lost my job. This situation and my way of seeing it produce depressive symptoms in me (sadness, apathy, tiredness, nervousness.). The medication will alleviate those symptoms, but in no way will it change my way of thinking or, of course, give me a job. This is how many people who only treat the symptoms of psychological disorders with medication find that what would first be a few weeks or months of taking medication is years. Every time they try to withdraw it, they logically find themselves very bad.
Medications also have SIDE EFFECTS such as dependence (they are addictive) and tolerance (we need more and more medication to achieve the same effect).
The use of these tranquilizing drugs should not exceed three months, and in many cases, the patient takes them for the rest of his life, and what is worse, the root of his problem is still untreated.
Psychotherapeutic Treatments
Psychotherapeutic treatments approach psychological disorders from a very different perspective than pharmacological treatments.
They start from the premise that psychological disorders are not diseases like diabetes or the flu but are disorders that, in addition to affecting physiology (bodily symptoms), also affect the way people think, their behavior, and their environment. Social and family. For this reason, its treatment must encompass all these areas and not only the symptomatological aspect of pharmacological treatments.
All these aspects are those that are behind the symptoms and those that the psychotherapeutic treatment addresses individually with the affected person.
Cognitive behavioral therapy is the most effectual and modern form of psychotherapy for psychological disorders. Based mainly on the distorted or dysfunctional interpretations that appear in psychological disorders and directly influence the individual’s behavior and emotions, it is the most studied and effective method of psychotherapeutic treatment.
Are Psychological Treatments Effective?
The effectiveness of drugs and psychological treatments. Psychological difficulties are a more common health problem than is generally believed.
The UN estimates that 1 in 4 people will experience a mental wellness problem in their lifetime. In addition, the economic and health crises in recent decades have considerably increased accumulated stress, increasing the risk of mental health damage.…