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ABOUT PSYCHIATRY: MOST COMMON TREATMENTS
Psychiatrists use a wide range of treatments--including various forms of
psychotherapy, medications, and hospitalization--according to the needs of each
patient.
Psychotherapy is a systematic treatment method in which, during regularly
scheduled meetings, the psychiatrist and patient discuss troubling problems and
feelings. The psychiatrist helps patients understand the basis of these problems
and find solutions. Depending on the extent of the problem, treatment may take
just a few sessions over one or two weeks, or many sessions over several years.
Psychiatrists use many forms of psychotherapy. There are psychotherapies that
help patients change behaviors or thought patterns, psychotherapies that help
patients explore the effect of past relationships and experiences on present
behaviors, psychotherapies that treat troubled couples or families together, and
more treatments that are tailored to help solve other problems in specific ways.
Psychoanalysis is an intensive form of individual psychotherapy that
requires frequent sessions over several years. Psychiatrists who are also
psychoanalysts have had additional years of training in psychoanalysis. They
help the patient to recall and examine events, memories, and feelings from the
past as a means of helping the patient understand present feelings and behavior
and make changes as necessary.
Psychiatrists may also prescribe medications when a thorough evaluation
of the patient suggests that medication may correct imbalances in brain
chemistry involved in some mental disorders. Most medication is used in
combination with psychotherapy. Just like a diabetic patient who needs insulin
or a heart patient nitroglycerin, a patient suffering from a severe mental
illness may need a specific type of psychiatric medication.
The usefulness of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) in certain cases is
indisputable. ECT has repeatedly been shown to be effective for patients who
cannot take medications due to heart conditions, old age, or severe
malnourishment and for patients who are suicidal or who do not respond to
antidepressants. Before ECT is administered, patients receive anesthesia and a
muscle relaxant to protect them from physical harm and pain. Its effects are
largely transitory.
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FEDERATION
OF TEXAS PSYCHIATRY