Current Therapy Modalities in the Mental Health Field

Current Therapy Modalities in the Mental Health Field

Introduction

Mental health recognizes the state of balance between a person and his socio-cultural environment which guarantees labor force participation, intellectual and relationship to achieving well-being and quality of life. Mental health counseling provides training for both psychotherapists and counselors. Visions of the differences between counseling and psychotherapy is different in the various professional associations: while some consider an inferior psychological counseling psychotherapy (counselor dealing with problems simple or issues relating to personal development and psychotherapist treating disorders including related psychopathology), others argue that psychotherapy and counseling are two different subjects.

Psychological counseling differs from psychotherapy in that, while the therapist practice proper behavior including psychological intervention in cases of major mental disorders, psychological counselor trying to help customers overcome the bottlenecks inherent in personal development. Counselor and psychotherapist working both individually and optimize interpersonal relations (relations between children and parents, relations between spouses, etc.) and / or self-discovery and personal development.

Discussion

Brief History and Development of Counseling Field

Psychotherapy and counseling theories were developed in the early 1920's, but it is common belief that it has been initiated a long time ago. In 1888, Sigmund Freud led the foundation for carrying out research into human mind. He contributed a lot in this field through his research work. He became a neurologist after getting trained and started working and counseling with patients who were diagnosed as hysterical. He continued his method of psychoanalysis and applying theories till the 1930's. Freud came up with techniques known as Hypnosis, which he also adopted in his own work in order to treat the patients with mind disorders and later on he just concentrated developing his own theories right after identifying the fact that hypnotherapy is the only solution and useful approach in order to deal with the patients with mental disorders. Even though, the work done by Freud is still well known. He was the one who delivered an idea of mind division into id, ego and super ego. He further revealed and believed that toddlers go through Oral, Anal and phallic phases and appears to be stuck in one of the stage, which later on can lead them to devastating results (Arrocho, 2004).

The period of 1940's and 1950's is considered to be significant in terms of expansion of counseling field. The recent practice of counseling established on the basis of person's centered approach was initiated by one of the US Psychologists Carl Rogers. That person centered approach is listed and named under the branch of psychotherapy “Humanistic”, which are now considered as three general kinds of psychological therapies: psychoanalytic and psychodynamic therapies, behavioral therapies and humanistic therapies (Arulmani, 2007).

Importance of Counseling in the Mental Health

Mental health counselors treat people who are suffering from depression, anxiety or other family or social problems. This counseling is different from other types of counseling in the field of psychology. They differ from clinical psychologists in a way that clinical psychologists treat the person after ...