How to acheive Psycho therapy?

Private hospitals and public institutions provide trained people to talk, play, and work with the patient. The whole hospital becomes a therapeutic environment or milieu. Behavior Therapy A new technique called behavior therapy is arousing considerable interest. It is used to help people with phobias of various kinds and is, on the psychological level, a treatment somewhat akin to the desensitization treatment used for hay fever and other allergies.

The objective in allergy treatment is to build up resistance by means of injections of small, gradually increasing doses of pollens or other materials to which a patient is sensitive. In behavior therapy, the patient identifies his fears and he lists, in order of increasing severity, the situations that provoke the fears. He is then taught a technique of deep muscle relaxation and, while relaxed, is presented with an imaginary situation based on the least fear- provoking item on his list. The situation is presented repeatedly at intervals of about half a minute until it no longer evokes fear. Then, progressively stronger fear-provoking situations are presented until even what were the most frightening in the past no longer cause fear. When the patient stops reacting fearfully to imaginary situations, he may be freed of fear in real situations. Behavior therapy, which may be completed in about a dozen sessions, has been reported to be highly effective for phobias, producing apparently complete recovery or marked improvement in about 87 percent of patients.

New Facilities for Help For centuries, victims of mental disease were treated little better, and sometimes even worse, than animals-tied in chains, hidden away in filthy institutions, with virtually no chance for recovery, released only by death. Today, the situation is entirely different. It would be too much to say that all of our public mental institutions routinely use all the modern forms of treatment that might rescue many inmates, but more and more do so. Moreover, before tranquilizers and other medicines came along, few general and community hospitals would admit patients with emotional problems because their behavior could be disturbing and even frightening to other patients.

Now most do admit them and have staff and facilities to treat them. Some have special psychiatric units for those who need inpatient care. Others admit emotionally ill patients to regular medical wards. In both cases, inpatient treatment is directed at helping the patient to get over his problem in a matter of weeks. In addition, many hospitals now have special provisions for patients who do not require inpatient care around the clock. There are, for ex- ample, night hospital provisions which make it possible for a patient to work or go to school by day and be hospitalized and treated by night.

Psychiatric outpatient clinics and community mental health centers have been springing up. For patients who can afford it, the private mental hospital often can provide excellent treatment and care. And, of course, mental and emotional problems may be treated in a specialist's private office. Which Treatment? Some forms of treatment take longer than others, and it is impossible to make any valid blanket statement as to which is likely to be of most benefit to various types of people who need help. Perhaps a parallel from the field of surgery can help explain why. Lancing a boil is a simple surgical procedure compared with correcting a congenital hip dislocation. A family physician would probably feel competent to handle the first but not the second. Yet the person with the boil may be suffering acutely while the person with the dislocated hip may get along quite well.