Biological (Medical) Model

  • The mind’s activity depends on the brain whose composition is genetically determined
  • Still acknowledge influences of environment and learning
  • Genetic influences on anxiety and depression
  • Brain structure different in individuals with schizophrenia- process information differently
  • Therapy: Pharmacological treatments (medication)

Behavioural Model

  • Focuses on what people do rather than on brain structures and/or chemistry
  • Behaviour is analyzed in terms of stimulus, response, and reinforcement.

o   Their fear, their response to the fear, experience of relief leads to reinforcing the response to that certain fear.

  • The aim is to discover what reinforcements sustain and undesirable behavior and then to alter those reinforcements.
  • Therapy: Exposure
    • Behavior results from complex attitudes, expectations, and motives rather than simple reinforcements.
    • Individuals are taught to substitute their unrealistic thoughts with realistic ones and to test their assumptions.
    • Therapy:
      • Emphasizes thoughts as well as unconscious emotions, ideas, and impulses
      • Emphasizes the role of the past in shaping the present.
      • Therapies: Interpersonal, humanistic, existential, experiential

        Psychodynamic Model

    • Typically emphasizes exposure as well as changing problematic patterns of thinking
    • Typically involve- 10 individual or group sessions with a therapist plus homework
    • Has been shown to produce significant improvements
    • Has been combined with drug therapy

Cognitive Model

“Seeks to make conscious that which is unconscious.”

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