Background (skip this if you just need a glossary breakdown but I think it’s good to know)

Mental health treatment can be broken down into 5 sections:

• behavioral: our actions/behaviors
• cognitive: our thoughts & beliefs
• social/cultural: interpersonal & society dynamics
• biological: medication, brain/body specific treatment
• psychoanalytic/dynamic: Freudian I fear (addressing your past)

Most therapy modalities will integrate multiple aspects of all of these. Consider which you want emphasized for you.

Thankfully, psych research has identified which modalities are best for which mental health struggles. However everyone’s different so trust your gut above all else (and your healthcare provider).

Modality Breakdown

• Behavioral Therapy - focuses on addressing normal & abnormal behavior
  • Think classical conditioning, desensitizing, operant conditioning
  • Abnormal meaning maladaptive NOT strange (ex. laughing at a horror movie = strange, laughing at your friends when they share a horrifying experiences = potentially abnormal)
  • Often incorporated into CBT (stay tuned)
  • Recommended particularly for Anxiety Disorders
• Cognitive Therapy - focuses on how people think
  • Dysfunctional thinking → dysfunctional emotions/behavior
  • Recommended for Mood Disorders (particularly depression), anxiety disorders, obsessive compulsive disorders, trauma & related disorders
• Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy - combines focuses of thinking and behavior to address pathology
  • Go-to therapy modality for most practitioners since it’s proven to be most effective for many disorders
• Humanistic Therapy - focuses around concern and respect for patient’s abilities to make decisions that maximize potential
  • Considered more new wave
  • Client-centered makes client the leader of their therapy experience. Therapist assists in emphasizing your concerns, care, and interests
  • Gestalt emphasizes mindfulness and self-responsibility
  • Existential focuses on free will, self-determination, and search for meaning
  • Not ideal for those in high levels of mental health crisis
• Integrative or Holistic - focused on ****psychosynthesis—the relationship between mind, body, and spirit
  • Also considered more new wave
  • Main goal is healing relationship with these aspects of self + increased understanding of them
• Dialectical Behavioral Therapy - focuses on balancing acceptance and change
  • dialectics, CBT + Zen philosophy
  • emphasized skills: mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, interpersonal effectiveness
  • behavioral analysis: target behaviors by identifying causes & effects to integrate new skills
  • has individual and group components for skills training
    • uses a treatment team (+ support system for caretakers)
  • very effective for BPD (esp considering it’s treatment resistant)