Individual psychotherapy involves regularly scheduled sessions between the patient and a mental health professional such as a psychiatrist, psychologist, psychiatric social worker, or psychiatric nurse. The goal of this treatment is to help consumers understand why they are acting and thinking in ways that are troubling or dangerous to themselves or others so they have more control over their behaviours and can correct them.

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Talk-therapy sessions may focus on a patient’s current or past problems, experiences, thoughts, feelings, or relationships. By sharing experiences with a trained, knowledgeable, and understanding person–by talking about the   patient’s world with someone outside it–people with mental illnesses may gradually understand more about themselves and their problems.

Individual psychotherapy is used successfully to help persons to come to terms with issues such as social relationships, work, marriage, sexuality and career concerns. It also addresses emotional, behavioural and social problems.

 

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) helps people learn to change inappropriate or negative thought patterns and behaviors associated with their illness. The goal is to recognize negative thoughts or mind-sets (mental processes such as perceiving, remembering, reasoning, decision making, and problem solving) and replace them with positive thoughts, which will lead to more appropriate and beneficial behavior. For instance, cognitive behavioral therapy tries to replace thoughts that lead to low self-esteem (“I can’t do anything right”) with positive expectations (“I can do this correctly”). Combined with effective medication, CBT can successfully treat people with depression, anxiety disorders as well as AD/HD and several more serious psychiatric disorders.

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Exposure Therapy

A type of behavioral therapy known as exposure therapy or exposure and response prevention is very useful for treating obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and specific phobias (e.g. social phobia). During exposure therapy, a patient is deliberately exposed to whatever triggers the obsessive thoughts or reaction to a previous traumatic experience under controlled conditions. The patient is then taught techniques to avoid performing the compulsive rituals or avoidance behaviour or to work through the trauma.

 

Interpersonal Therapy

Interpersonal therapy focuses on the relationships a person has with others. The goal of interpersonal therapy is, of course, to improve interpersonal skills. The therapist actively teaches  patients to evaluate their interactions with others and to become aware of self-isolation and difficulties getting along with, relating to, or understanding others. He or she also offers advice and helps patients make decisions about the best way to deal with other people.

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Brief Psychodynamic Psychotherapy

In psychodynamic therapy individuals are helped to discover the roots of their concerns in childhood traumas. In later life memories of these traumas can lead to anxiety about recurrence in the context of current relationships. The therapist can help  such person gain insight as to how related unconscious conflict, anxiety and defence mechanisms contribute to symptoms and personality problems.

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Benefits of individual psychotherapy include improved interpersonal relationships, stress reduction, improved self-esteem, improved coping skills in dealing with difficult situations, and a deeper insight into your personality, your development, your habits, and relationships.  With that insight, comes the capacity to change.

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Couples, Family & Group Psychotherapies

Psychotherapy is also provided for couples and families. Here it is not merely individuals who become the centre of psychotherapy but the couple and family relationships respectively. In group psychotherapy persons can become more aware of their interpersonal responses and group members can assist each other’s growth. These therapies relate to personal growth. They also deal with crises and special problems, as well as providing education about various illnesses and life situations and how to deal with them.

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In several cases a patient will receive a combination of individual and couple/family or group psychotherapies.

Therapists offer several different types of psychotherapy. In general no one type of therapy is necessarily “better” than another type. When deciding which therapy (or therapies) will likely be the most successful treatment option for an individual , a psychotherapist considers the nature of the problem to be treated and the  patient’s personality, cultural and family background, and personal experiences. Sometimes aspects of different therapies can be integrated to fit a patient’s particular profile.