Psychological Treatment For Stress: The 5 Types Of Therapy Used
In the 21st century, anxiety, depression and stress have skyrocketed in terms of the number of people who suffer from any of these conditions related to mental health that can considerably affect the quality of life, which is why it is of utmost importance that Psychological treatments are applied that allow it to be addressed effectively.
A psychological treatment for stress It is used in order to treat those mental disorders that are specifically related to stress and, at the same time, have usually developed due to the patient’s exposure to some stressful or traumatic event or situation.
This article will explain some of the psychological treatments that have been developed to address disorders that are specifically associated with stress.
These are the most used psychological treatments for stress problems.
1. Stress inoculation training (SIE)
A psychological treatment for stress is the program known as stress inoculation training and is based on patients learning strategies and skills for coping and managing the anxiety suffered in relation to post-traumatic stress that can suffer people who have been victims of rape.
It should be noted that this psychological treatment for traumatic stress is not especially focused on the thoughts or memories associated with the trauma suffered by patients, but rather It is focused on teaching and training coping skills, carried out through a program with a duration of approximately 10 to 14 sessions..
We are faced with a psychological treatment for post-traumatic stress that is divided into three large phases: the educational phase, the training phase and the generalization phase.
In the first phase, the psychoeducational phase, the psychotherapist has the objective of providing all the necessary information about the mechanisms of post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD) based on models that explain this disorder from the perspective of learning theories and the characteristics of stress coping mechanisms.
The second phase, training, is where Patients learn and train a series of coping strategies for anxious responses (e.g., breathing techniques, progressive muscle relaxation, cognitive restructuring, and visualization techniques, among others).
Finally, the generalization phase, which is the moment in which patients must put into practice those coping skills, which they have trained in the second phase, in daily life and performing a series of tasks that the psychotherapist has entrusted to them with care. in order to put into practice those skills and techniques that they have been training during treatment.
2. Present-focused therapy (CPT)
Present-focused therapy is a psychological treatment for stress, whose main objective is for the patient to achieve understand how stress has come to influence the way we currently interact with other people in a maladaptive wayso that you can learn new, more adaptive and functional ways within your interpersonal relationships while having greater control over yourself.
On the other hand, in addition to using this therapy in order to improve the interpersonal relationships of each patient, It is used so that the patient learns to naturalize the symptomsso that they generate less anxiety, as well as to promote an increase in self-confidence and their sense of mastery over their life and the situations they face on a daily basis.
This psychological treatment for stress is a type of intervention that is explained in detail in a manual that has been developed for this purpose and it is recommended that it be carried out with a frequency of one session each week, with a duration of 1 hour and 30 minutes.
This treatment also incorporates techniques such as behavioral activation, cognitive restructuring or exposure techniques. Furthermore, another objective of this therapy is to guide the patient to focus on the here and now, so that they are able to focus on their cognitive and emotional states, so that they can develop introspection skills to be able to identify them. and talk about them in therapy.
Once achieved, the patient must be trained to increase their tolerance to stressful states, so that they do not seek escape routes that could be harmful.
EMDR or “Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing” therapy is a psychological treatment for post-traumatic stress that has been recognized as one of the first-choice treatments for this disorder by several highly relevant guidelines (e.g. e.g., the World Health Organization (WHO), the American Psychological Association (APA), among others).
EMDR therapy is largely based on the hypothesis that post-traumatic stress disorder has developed largely due to incomplete processing of those lived experiences that are related to the disturbing or traumatic event and/or by a dysfunctional storage in memory of said lived experiencebecause there has been an alteration in that person’s ability to keep them integrated into their memory in an adaptive way.
EMDR is a psychological treatment for post-traumatic stress that is divided into 8 phases in order to address the symptoms derived from stressful situations that have not been processed correctly. These phases are listed below: collection of the patient’s history, preparation, evaluation of traumatic memories, desensitization, installation, body examination, closure and reassessment. It should be noted that EMDR seeks to process somatic, emotional and cognitive aspects at the same level.
4. Psychological debriefing therapy
This psychological treatment for stress is used with the aim of prevent and alleviate the psychological consequences of traumatic events experienced by people working on the front line (for example, healthcare workers during the coronavirus pandemic, army soldiers who are on an international mission, personnel who worked on the front lines to help those affected by the eruption of the La Palma volcano in 2021 or any other worker whose job exposes him to potentially stressful situations that can become traumatic).
This treatment has been developed in order to help those people who have been on the front lines** confront the smells, thoughts, smells, memories, emotions and physical sensations that were associated with a stressful and/or traumatic incident** . Likewise, it is used approximately 24 to 72 hours after the incident has stabilized, and follow-up psychological therapy sessions may be carried out if necessary.
In the event of an event of this nature, it is important to provide psychological assistance to all those affected; However, it would be appropriate to separate those affected based on the level of exposure and affectation they have had due to the incident suffered.
We are going to list the phases of psychological debriefing therapy, these being the following: introduction phase, telling of the facts, thoughts and impressions, reactions on an emotional level, normalization, planning for the future and coping and, finally, the dissolution of the group.
Likewise, it should be noted that this therapy serves as an urgent intervention in cases of people who have suffered traumatic events on the front line; However, it is important that they attend therapy for as long as they need if they need it.
5. Cognitive processing therapy
Cognitive processing therapy is a psychological treatment for stress based on a mostly cognitive intervention to help people who are suffering from PTSD and to also address feelings of guilt associated with this psychological disorder. Likewise, theoretically it is based on socio-cognitive theories related to PTSD and are used to understand how the traumatic event is interpreted by the person and also how they cope with it.
On the other hand, cognitive processing therapy seeks to help people suffering from PTSD regain a sense of control and mastery over their lives and, during the intervention, psychological techniques such as cognitive restructuring are used in order to address the belief system that the person has associated with the traumatic event and also the circumstances related to it.
This psychological treatment for stress is carried out over 12 sessions and the sessions can be carried out both in groups and individually, using some techniques such as those listed below: psychoeducation, Socratic dialogue, written trauma narrative, among others. others.
