What is Psychotherapy?

@Bookworm: Psychiatrists are medical doctors, and prescribing medication is their territory. Their training in actual psychotherapy is considerably less than that of psychologists or lcsw's and so on. Aside from this fact, due to their being medical doctors, they are reimbursed much more for their time than a therapist is, therefore it is much more expensive to spend time with a psychiatrist than it is a doctorate or master's level therapist who actually specializes in therapy.

As for more concrete, not quite. Psychotherapy is a time tested and empirically proven treatment for mental, emotional or behavioral disorders. Their long term effectiveness without the nasty side effects makes it a much better option, but it takes time and effort and does not usually have an immediate reward, such as drugs, so people sometimes tend to favor drugs as a quick fix fast food treatment option.

Latte31 - I have heard of exposure therapy as a way to treat phobias. I recently saw a television program that dealt with a women that had arachnophobia which is the fear of spiders.

Every time she came in contact with a spider her heart would race and she would be filled with anxiety. What the psychologist did was slowly introduce the spider to the lady little by little.

At first she was in the same room with the spider and then the spider was placed in a cage in front of her and at the end she was holding the spider in her hands.

The point of the exposure therapy is to point out that our worst fears are worked up in our minds and there is no truth to them.

This is why when the lady was confronted with the spider in her hands and nothing happened to her it will start replacing her previous fear with this new found feeling and will no longer have the phobia.

Of course it does take a long time to get someone to this point, but at least it is a viable option for those that suffer from phobias and anxiety.

Moldova- I agree that psychotherapy techniques treat the patient because it helps them understand that difference between what they are thinking in their mind and what they are feeling.

A person with anxiety or OCD needs more than just medication. They need to understand why they feel the way that they do so that they can begin to free themselves of the constant worrying.

think that the most challenging psychotherapy sessions involve adolescent psychotherapy. Teenagers have distorted views of themselves with respect to reality so they really need to seek professional help because the average person may dismiss a depressive episode as a phase and the teen might be contemplating suicide because they don’t have the appropriate coping skills to deal with disappoint that happens in life.

They also do not have the proper perspective because they have not lived long enough. These patients do benefit from medication, but they benefit even more from therapeutic treatments.

SauteePan - I agree that drugs are a factor in treatment but it should not be the only factor because eventually you develop a tolerance to the drug and need to receive additional dosages in order to receive the same effect.

The use of cognitive behavioral therapy is very effective because it tries to recreate other behavioral patterns that might help the patient overcome depressive episodes.

Through journaling and role playing a therapist can allow the patient to understand why they are making the choices that they are making and what could be done the next time the same scenario presents itself.

This form of behavioral modification helps the patient see that they have choices and if they make the right choice a positive outcome will result.

This gives the patient an empowered feeling that they are in control and can change their life for the better.

Bookworm - I agree that drug therapy is more concrete than psychotherapy but drugs alone cannot treat many mental and cognitive disorders.

The use of psychotherapy or any other form of therapy allows the patient to seek alternative behavioral patterns that may be healthier.

This is conjunction with drug therapy are the most helpful ways of treating a patient because a comprehensive approach to care is best.

For example, if you have a patient that is bipolar you will want to prescribe drugs like lithium but the patient needs to understand what the triggers are that make the patient more depressed and this is done through various psychotherapy techniques.

Apparently psychiatrists spend more time prescribing medication for their patients than they do in talk therapy. In a ratio close to 3 to 1 medication is prescribed over psychotherapy.

Is it possible that insurance companies reimburse psychiatrists for medication more readily, because it is something more concrete than talk therapy?