NRNP6645 Week 1: Foundations of Psychotherapy

Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.

—Sigmund Freud

While working with a patient in the late 1800s, Sigmund Freud discovered the health benefits of talking about emotions and illnesses. When Freud introduced his “talking cure” (fundamental psychotherapy), his efforts were met with considerable skepticism. However, as more and more psychiatrists learned that Freud’s methods brought about change in patients who suffered from a variety of mental health issues, his methods were adopted and refined. Today, psychotherapy is recognized as a viable treatment for a wide variety of mental health issues—many of which are examined throughout this course—and it is used in a variety of settings, such as individual, group, and family therapy. NRNP6645 Week 1: Foundations of Psychotherapy

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This week, you explore the foundations of psychotherapy and consider its biological basis. You also examine the influence of culture, religion, and socioeconomics on psychotherapy treatments. Finally, you consider how legal and ethical considerations vary across psychotherapy settings.

Learning Objectives

Students will:

• Evaluate whether psychotherapy treatments have a biological basis
• Analyze influences of culture, religion, and socioeconomics on personal perspectives of psychotherapy treatments
• Compare legal and ethical considerations among individual, family, and group modalities of therapy
• Explain how differences in legal and ethical considerations among individual, family, and group therapy modalities impact therapeutic approaches.

Discussion: Biological Basis and Ethical/Legal Considerations of Psychotherapy

For this Discussion, you will consider whether psychotherapy also has a biological basis and analyze the ways in which legal and ethical considerations differ in the individual, family, and group therapy settings.

To prepare:

• Review this week’s Learning Resources, reflecting on foundational concepts of psychotherapy, biological and social impacts on psychotherapy, and legal and ethical issues across the modalities (individual, family, and group).
• Search the Walden Library databases for scholarly, peer-reviewed articles that inform and support your academic perspective on these topics.

By Day 3

Post an explanation of whether psychotherapy has a biological basis. Explain how culture, religion, and socioeconomics might influence one’s perspective on the value of psychotherapy treatments. Describe how legal and ethical considerations for group and family therapy differ from those for individual therapy, and explain how these differences might impact your therapeutic approaches for clients in group, individual, and family therapy. Support your rationale with at least three peer-reviewed, evidence-based sources and explain why each of your supporting sources is considered scholarly. Attach the PDFs of your sources.

Read a selection of your colleagues’ responses.

By Day 6

Respond to at least two of your colleagues on 2 different days by providing an additional scholarly resource that supports or challenges their position, along with a brief explanation of the resource.

Note: For this Discussion, you are required to complete your initial post before you will be able to view and respond to your colleagues’ postings. Begin by clicking on the “Post to Discussion Question” link and then select “Create Thread” to complete your initial post. Remember, once you click on Submit, you cannot delete or edit your own posts, and you cannot post anonymously. Please check your post carefully before clicking on Submit!

Submission and Grading Information

Biological Basis and Ethical /Legal Considerations of Psychotherapy Sample Paper

Psychotherapy is one of the most successful methods for the treatment of various mental health issues. It is a strategy that is generally thought to transcend the psychological, behavioral, and somatic issues connected to mental health conditions. This sort of therapy’s primary goal is to encourage a shift in how a person interacts with their surroundings (Jimenez et al., 2018). Accordingly, positive changes in a person’s intrapersonal and interpersonal functioning are typically part of meaningful reactions to psychotherapy.

Biological Basis of Psychotherapy

Despite the overwhelming evidence of the efficacy of psychotherapeutic interventions in the management of mental health, the evidence on its biological implications remains somewhat neglected. In recent years, however, more and more research into the biological basis of psychotherapy is being churned out in a bid to better understand its impact. Neuroimaging studies show changes in the prefrontal cortex and limbic areas of brain activity. These areas are generally responsible for emotional responses and present a link to the effects of the treatment. Moreover, numerous models have been developed to try and explain how psychotherapy influences our biology and these are based on controlled neurological processes. Messina et al., (2016) indicate that the brain circuitry involved in working memory, emotional regulation, as well as semantic representations may be involved.

The Effect of Culture, Religion, and Socioeconomics on The Value of Psychotherapy Treatments

The influence of one’s socioeconomic status, religion, or culture on psychotherapy can be pivotal. For instance, cultures outside the west may not particularly value psychotherapy in the same way. This could be attributed to the feeling of lacking proper representation in terms of the ideals conveyed through psychotherapies in one form or another. Additionally, it has been seen that a lower socioeconomic status, more succinctly, in impoverished populations, that psychotherapy may be undervalued as well because they do not see the immediate (Levi et al., 2018). Furthermore, research points to altered perception and cognitive inflexibility in poverty contributing to this gross undervaluation of the treatment. Numerous treatments today however have captured the influence of these issues by adopting cross-cultural considerations in therapy sessions (Koc & Kafa, 2019). Religion, on the other hand, plays a part by being a source of solace that grounds some of the psychotherapeutic approaches like group therapies. Moreover, it may however also instigate resistance to treatment and perpetuate mental illness (Vitorino et al., 2018).

Legal and Ethical Considerations

The key considerations in any type of therapy are autonomy, beneficence, non- maleficence, and justice. Each individual in a group or family therapy is still considered their own entity despite the group dynamic. The therapist or the facilitator of these sessions should treat each member accordingly while forming diverse relationships with each of the members. Accordingly, in these group and family therapy sessions the expected benefits go beyond intrapersonal therapy but also include an element of interpersonal and social benefits through the interactions (Foulkes & Anthony, 2018). All in all, because of the all-inclusive nature of the therapies compared to individual therapy, they may be more prone to disruptions in the therapeutic process. Such disruptions include breaking confidentiality. While the therapist is obligated to maintain confidentiality, the rest are not and this potentially influences the quality of interactions as the group is well informed of this fact. Before trust is established this could be detrimental to most family or group therapy sessions.

While taking charge of group and sessions, the mental health care worker should try to foster relationships with each of the members, encourage trust and open communication and work on building each individual at their own level (Mignone et al., 2017).

NRNP6645 Week 1: Foundations of Psychotherapy References

Foulkes, S. H., & Anthony, E. J. (2018). Group psychotherapy: The psychoanalytic approach. Routledge.

Jiménez, J. P., Botto, A., Herrera, L., Leighton, C., Rossi, J. L., Quevedo, Y., Silva, J. R., Martínez, F., Assar, R., Salazar, L. A., Ortiz, M., Ríos, U., Barros, P., Jaramillo, K., & Luyten, P. (2018). Psychotherapy and Genetic Neuroscience: An Emerging Dialog. Frontiers in genetics, 9, 257. https://doi.org/10.3389/fgene.2018.00257

Koç, V., & Kafa, G. (2019). Cross-cultural research on psychotherapy: the need for a change. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 50(1), 100-115.

Levi, U., Laslo-Roth, R., & Rosenstreich, E. (2018). Socioeconomic Status and Psychotherapy: A Cognitive-Affective View. J Psychiatry Behav Health Forecast. 2018; 1 (2), 1008.

Messina, I., Sambin, M., Beschoner, P., & Viviani, R. (2016). Changing views of emotion regulation and neurobiological models of the mechanism of action of psychotherapy. Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience, 16(4), 571–587. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-016-0440-5

Mignone, T., Klostermann, K., Mahadeo, M., Papagni, E., & Jankie, J. (2017). Confidentiality and family therapy: Cultural considerations. ARC Journal of Psychiatry, 2(1), 9-16.

Vitorino, L. M., Lucchetti, G., Leão, F. C., Vallada, H., & Peres, M. F. P. (2018). The association between spirituality and religiousness and mental health. Scientific reports, 8(1), 1-9.

Grading Criteria

To access your rubric:

Week 1 Discussion Rubric

Post by Day 3 and Respond by Day 6

To Participate in this Discussion:

Week 1 Discussion