Clinical psychology

Clinical psychology is the study of mental disorders. It is about learning, understanding, diagnosing, treating or preventing these types of illnesses. Clinical psychologists examinine the mental functioning of a person and use psychotherapy to treat the disorder. Psychotherapy uses talking instead of medical or physical treatments.
The first psychological clinic opened in 1896 at the University of Pennsylvania by Lightner Witmer. In the first half of the 20th century, clinical psychology mainly about psychological assessment, not treatment. After World War II, there was a big increase in the numbers of trained clinical psychologists. There are two main educational models - the Ph.D. scientist-practitioner model which looks at research, and the Psy.D. practitioner-scholar model which looks at treatment. Clinical psychologists are now regarded as experts in psychotherapy.

Four main schools

Clinical psychologists generally train in one of four primary academic areas– psychodynamic, humanistic, behavior therapy/cognitive behavioral, and systems or family therapy.

Psychodynamic

Sigmund Freud’s ideas led to the development of psychodynamic psychotherapy. Its goal is to help the patient, or client, to understand the meaning of the unconscious desires and conflicts that have caused their problems.

Humanistic

Humanistic psychology was developed in the 1950s in reaction to both behaviourism (the belief that conditioning is the main cause of human behavior) and psychoanalysis (the belief that the unconscious is the main cause of human behavior). The major principles of humanistic psychology are:

1. A person’s present is more important than his past or future
2. People must take responsibility for their actions to be mentally healthy
3. Every person deserves basic human dignity
4. Self-improvement and self-understanding is the key to happiness

Behavioral and Cognitive behavioral

This approach includes behavior therapy, a form of psychotherapy that aims to strengthen desired behaviors and remove undesired behaviors. Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) was formed by combining behavior therapy with cognitive therapy (which helps a person identify and change thinking or behavior that does not function normally) in the second half of the 20th century.

Systems or family therapy

Family therapy focuses on the relationships between the members of a family. Goals may include helping a family deal with the problems of one member or improving communication.