Treatments of Dysfunctional Behaviour

Biological treatment

The assumption here is that mental illnesses can be treated in the same ways as physical illnesses mainly with Chemotherapy (anti-depressants such as Prozac), but also with psycho-surgery (brain surgery) and electro-convulsive therapy (shock therapy).

Karp & Frank, Combination therapy & the depressed woman

• Aim: To compare drug treatment and non-drug treatments for depression.
• Methodology:
  • ​Review article of previous research.
  • Concentrated on women diagnosed with depression.
  • Independent design (single drug/psychological treatment, combined treatments or placebo groups).
• Results:
  • ​Adding psychological treatments to drug therapy didn't increase the effectiveness of drug therapy.
• Conclusion: Although it would seem logical that two treatments are better than one, the evidence does not show any better outcomes for patients offered combined therapy as opposed to only drug therapy.
• Evaluation:
  • ​The biological medical model has been criticised for making people become patients, there is little emphasis on self help, getting well has become professionalised.
  • Chemotherapy and other biological treatments can have several side effects e.g. Prozac leads to psychotic state.
  • One could argue that drugs only treat the symptom and not the cause.
  • However a range of biological treatments have helped to improve the lives of millions of people who without this treatment would not be able to function adequately.

Behavioural treatment

The assumption here is that systematic desensitisation uses classical conditioning techniques to treat a range of disorders. E.g. phobias, by paring the phobic stimulus with something pleasant or relaxing, the treatment of phobias should be effective. E.g. Little Peter, fear response was a rabbit; he was conditioned with the response of dinner. As eating made him feel good he learned to associate the rabbit with feeling good.

McGrath, Successful treatment of a noise phobia

Lucy with specific noise phobia using systematic desensitisation.

• Findings:
  • ​1^st session Lucy was reluctant to let balloons be burst even from far. When burst she cried.
  • By 4^th session she was able to signal a balloon to be burst 10 metres away.
  • During the end of a few sessions she started to become less scared until she was able to pop one herself.
  • Her thermometer scores were reduced significantly.
• Conclusion: It appears that noise phobias in children are amendable to systematic desensitisation.
• Evaluation:
  • ​Effective for phobias but not all dysfunctional behaviours such as psychotic behaviours.
  • Behavioural treatments are reductionist because they don’t take into account other factors such as cognitive or biological influences which may be the cause for dysfunctional behaviour.

Cognitive treatment

There are a number of cognitive therapies one such therapy is rational emotive therapy, Ellis identified the key aspect of RET which he refers to as ABC:

• A – for the activating event, perhaps the behaviour or attitude if another person
• B – for the belief held about A
• C – which are the thoughts, feelings or behaviours resulting from A

In order to change the rational beliefs, Ellis expands the ABC model to include:

• D – for disputing the irrational beliefs and
• E – for the effects of successful disruption of the irrational beliefs

Beck et al, Comparing pharmacotherapy and cognitive therapy

• Findings:
  • ​Both groups showed significant decrease in depression symptoms on all three rating scales.
  • Cognitive treatment group showed significantly greater improvements on self-reports (79% compared with 20% of those with drug therapy).
  • Drop out rate was 5% in the cognitive therapy group and 32% in the drug treatment group.
• Evaluation:
  • ​Cognitive therapy leads to better treatment of depression.
  • There are fewer symptoms that the individuals suffer from whereas for the biological treatments there is more of a risk factor involved.
  • Rating scale used therefore open to interpretation.
  • High in ecological validity due to the patients already suffering from depression and they would attend a psychiatric clinic normally.