Psychotherapy is a commonly used intervention in the management of mental health issues. It is often recommended as the first-line treatment before other options, such as psycho-pharmacotherapy in some conditions, such as anxiety. It is a collaborative treatment intervention that relies heavily on the care provider-patient relationship. Various types of psychotherapy include cognitive behavioral therapy and family therapy. Debates on the effectiveness of psychotherapy and the biological basis of psychotherapy exist. This essay evaluates the biological basis of psychotherapy and evaluates individual, group, and family therapy.
Psychotherapy has a biological basis, like psychopharmacological interventions, due to its therapeutic ability. Research affirms that psychotherapy changes brain connectivity and activity. Deits-Lebehn et al. (2020) state that well-perched psychotherapy provides adequate psychological stimulation, promoting new growth, neuron connectivity, and better blood supply. Research also shows that psychotherapy stimulates hormone release, which can be successful in offsetting negative emotions and moderating these emotions, such as over-excitation (arousal) and stress (depression) (Deits-Lebehn et al., 2020). Repeated cycles of psychotherapy assist in many instances, such as depression and anxiety, and anger management.
Researchers argue that erasing unhelpful schemas and beliefs helps showcase transformational change in psychotherapy (Kramer et al., 2020). For example, psychotherapy has successfully managed bullying behavior in children and adolescents, leading to complete transformation, indicating that psychotherapy could have a biological basis. Cultural, social-economic, and religious practices also affect an individual’s view of the effectiveness of psychotherapy. Some cultures do not encourage speaking up or discussing personal problems, which may limit their perception and acceptance of psychotherapy (Wheeler, 2020). Thus, individual perspectives may embrace or disregard practices, hence the need to be culturally sensitive as a care provider.
Legal and ethical considerations differ in the individual, family, and group therapy settings. Like all other care interventions, individual therapy follows all ethical and legal principles. Informed consent, justice, veracity, fidelity, self-respect, autonomy, beneficence, and non-maleficence are all vital individual therapy (Sanghvi & Pandley, 2019). Despite sharing personal information, group therapy sessions maintain confidentiality in that patients only share the information they are comfortable with (Hahn et al., 2022).
The group participants voluntarily participate hence altruism and other ethical issues such as justice and confidentiality. Information shared restricts deep-message sharing and entails what is significant to others. In addition, these groups are led by competent professionals who ensure that legal and ethical considerations are duly followed. They help handle group differences and ensure objective achievement despite the differences among group members.
In family therapy, confidentiality is also vital, and unlike individual therapy, only the information the patient is willing to share is discussed. Family therapy often entails how the family members can promote quality outcomes for the patient or problem (Barnett & Jacobson, 2019). In family therapy, the intervention conceptualizes the origin of a problem as a dysfunctional process. Barnett and Jacobson (2019) note that the focus of family therapy is thus addressing these dysfunctional patterns, especially relationships between family members. Cultural awareness, informed consent, and confidentiality (except when concealed information can lead to family harm) are essential considerations in family therapy.
All these articles used were sourced from current and reputable journals in psychiatry, and most were pulled from the American Psychological Association website. The APA website is a reliable database for sourcing peer-reviewed work. The articles are peer-reviewed and current (produced within the last five years). From the evidence presented above, psychotherapy has a biological basis due to the changes in areas such as memory and behavior and physical brain changes observed after psychotherapy. Understanding the biological basis of psychotherapy helps care providers plan and utilize psychotherapy to achieve the desired outcomes. Ethical and legal issues differ in individual, family, and group therapy. Understanding their differences and similarities can help professionals implement psychotherapy with minimal ethical and legal problems in these groups.
Barnet
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