Category: Adolescent Treatments

Career counselling is specifically focused on a person’s career opportunities, most often provided in educational, work, and community settings. It also may be undertaken to enable a person to change the direction of his or her career. The counselling process generally takes account of an individual’s preferences, intelligence, skill sets, work values, and experience. Career Counselling will help you to know and understand yourself and the world of work in order to make career – related and/or educational decisions. The goal is to not only help you make the decisions you need to make now but to give you the knowledge and skills you need to make future career and life decisions. Career Counselling can be appropriate for adolescents, early teens and as well as young adults.  It may be offered to groups as well as on individual basis.

OUR CAREER COUNSELOR WILL:

1. Help you figure out who you are and what you want out of your education, your career, and your life.
2. Be someone for you to talk to about your thoughts, ideas, feelings, and concerns about your career and educational choices, who will help you sort out, organize, and make sense of your thoughts and feelings.
3. Help you identify the factors influencing your career development, and help you assess your interests, abilities, and values.
4. Help you locate resources and sources of career information.
5. Help you to determine next steps and develop a plan to achieve your goals.

Psychoeducation refers to the process of providing education and information to those seeking or receiving mental health services and their family members. Many individuals who have a mental health condition know little or nothing about the condition they have been diagnosed with, what they might expect from therapy, or the positive and negative effects of any medications they may be prescribed. Information on these topics given to them by medical professionals may be confusing or otherwise difficult to comprehend and thus of little help. Offered in both individual and group formats, psychoeducation can benefit the individual diagnosed, parents and other family members, and caregivers and friends. Also, there are lots of wrong ideas and rumours surrounding psychiatric problems. One of the reasons could be less genuine information which people are exposed to through media and non-experts. Being misinformed can stop us from approaching a medical professional as a consequence of which chances of recovery are lowered. During psychoeducation misconceptions are clarified, queries are answered and detailed information is provided. It is generally known that those who have a thorough understanding of the challenges they are facing as well as knowledge of personal coping ability, internal and external resources, and their own areas of strength are often better able to address difficulties, feel more in control of the condition(s), and have a greater internal capacity to work toward mental and emotional well-being. Psychoeducation often leads to increased compliance with treatment regimens.

All fields of human endeavour use measurement in some form, and each field has its own
set of measuring tools and measuring units. In psychology, we tend to measure behaviour by the use of various standardised tests. Psychological assessment involves the gathering and integration of psychology-related data for the purpose of making a formal psychological evaluation that is accomplished through the use of tools such as tests, interviews, case studies, behavioural observation, etc. This is necessary for the purpose of diagnosis and treatment. Psychological testing is always performed by a licensed psychologist and consists largely of paper-and-pencil tests. It is done to help a psychologist better understand an individual and provide valuable insights into the individual’s behaviour, skills, thoughts and personality. Psychological testing commonly includes intelligence testing, personality testing, and skills testing, among other areas.

Pharmacotherapy involves the remediation or management of a psychiatric condition through the use of appropriate medication. Mental health conditions like Depression, Bipolar Disorder, Generalised Anxiety Disorder, OCD, Schizophrenia, Drug Addiction, Eating Disorder, Conversion, Personality Disorders, etc. often tend to require medication. Different conditions require different forms of medication. Advancements in science along with greater understanding of how the brain functions has led to more effective, less toxic, better-tolerated, and more specifically targeted medicines being available, with potentially fewer side-effects. Our psychiatrists and neuro-psychiatrists will evaluate your condition and based on your needs they will provide appropriate psychiatric medication.

Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT) is a type of cognitive behaviour therapy first used by Albert Ellis which focuses on resolving emotional and behavioural problems. The goal of the therapy is to change irrational beliefs to more rational ones. REBT involves uncovering clients’ irrational or dysfunctional beliefs and actively and directively disputes them. It sees people’s self-defeating cognitions, emotions, and behaviours as intrinsically and holistically connected, not disparate. It holds that they disturb themselves with disordered thoughts, feelings, and actions, all of which importantly interact with each other and with the difficulties they encounter in their environment. Therefore, with emotionally and behaviourally disturbed people, REBT employs a number of thinking, feel, and action techniques that are designed to help them change their self-defeating and socially sabotaging conduct to self-helping and socially effective ways. REBT theorizes that virtually all humans consciously and unconsciously train themselves to be to some degree emotionally disturbed. Therefore, with the help of an effective therapist and/or with self-help materials, they can teach themselves to lead more satisfying lives—if they choose to do so and work hard at modifying their thinking, feeling, and behaving. REBT encourages a person to identify their general and irrational beliefs (e.g. I must be perfect”) and subsequently persuades the person challenge these false beliefs through reality testing.

Cognitive Behaviour Therapy constitutes a group of treatment procedures aimed at identifying and modifying faulty thought processes, attitudes and attributions, and problem behaviours. CBT focuses on solutions, encouraging patients to challenge distorted cognitions and change destructive patterns of behaviour. The tools deployed in CBT—which include learning to identify and dispute unrealistic or unhelpful thoughts and developing problem-solving skills—have been used to treat a broad range of mental health challenges. CBT is now considered among the most efficacious forms of therapy, especially when clients incorporate strategies into their daily life. This effort to gain insight into one’s cognitive and behavioural processes and modify them in a constructive way often involves ongoing practice but research has proven CBT to be an effective tool in the management of variety of mental health issues viz. depression, bipolar disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, phobias, panic, schizophrenia and OCD to name a few.

Relaxation training is a general term that refers to methods that are used to teach and learn specific techniques to help people moderate or control reactivity or arousal that is problematic to them. It includes various arousal control methods, such as muscle relaxation training, biofeedback, meditation, imagery, and paced breathing. Relaxation training often is used in behaviour therapy as a means to reduce anxiety, tension, and stress. Research has shown it to be effective in a variety of disorders and conditions, primarily those related to anxiety, fear, and stress. Training patients to relax typically involves providing a rationale, demonstrating exercises, and practicing relaxation in treatment sessions. In addition, patients almost always are asked to practice (“homework”) between therapy sessions. Often, forms or log books are used for patients to record details about their practice. It also can be used to help facilitate communication during a therapy session with a client who may be too tense or anxious to communicate effectively with the therapist. The goal of relaxation training is to make the person physically relaxed and mentally alert. Relaxation training is different from lazing on once bed, sleeping and just not doing anything. It involves a series of steps which one must follow to achieve a state of lowered physiological arousal. Learning how to relax is beneficial in various situations, this simple technique can increase energy, motivation and productivity.

Supportive psychotherapy is a dyadic treatment that uses direct measures improve symptoms and maintain, restore, or improve self-esteem, ego function, and adaptive skills. This therapy is based on encouragement, optimism and support. Through supportive therapy one might be able to resume one’s daily’s activities and use his ability to cope with them. The aim of this therapy is also to reduce and prevent anxiety along with increasing a person’s awareness of his illness or his problem. The therapist attempts to help patients deal with their emotional distress and problems in living. It includes comforting, advising, encouraging, reassuring, and mostly listening, attentively and sympathetically. The therapist provides an emotional outlet, the chance for patients to express themselves and be themselves. Also, the therapist may inform patients about their illness and about how to manage it and how to adjust to it. Depending on the client’s specific needs, as well as the degree of severity or complexity of the issues at hand, supportive psychotherapy may be a short-term intervention or a longer-term, ongoing form of treatment. It can be a very beneficial treatment for a wide range of psychiatric disorders throughout the life span like Developmental disorders, Psychotic disorders, Mood disorders, Anxiety disorders, Personality disorders, Adjustment disorders, etc. Supportive psychotherapy can help these individuals by reducing their anxiety, providing a nurturing, positive relationship, improving and reinforcing their coping skills, boosting their self-esteem, providing reassurance when appropriate, confronting inappropriate behaviour when necessary, and giving them guidance and advice as needed.

Interpersonal Therapy (IPT) assumes that the development and maintenance of some psychiatric illnesses occur in a social and interpersonal context and that the onset, response to treatment, and outcomes are influenced by the interpersonal relations between the patient and significant others. The overall goal is to reduce or eliminate psychiatric symptoms by improving the quality of the patient’s current interpersonal relations and social functioning. The therapy moves through three defined phases: (1) The initial phase is dedicated to identifying the problem area that will be the target for treatment; (2) the intermedi¬ate phase is devoted to working on the target problem area(s); and (3) the termination phase is focused on consolidating gains made during treatment and preparing the patients for future work on their own. IPT is concerned with the ‘interpersonal context’—the relational factors that predispose, precipitate and perpetuate the patient’s distress. In addition, the treatment also aims to assist patients to improve their social support network so that they can better manage their current interpersonal distress.

Behaviour therapy is a direct and active mode of therapeutic intervention that recognizes the importance of behaviour, acknowledges the role of learning, and includes thorough assessment and evaluation. Instead of exploring past traumatic events or inner conflicts, behaviour therapists focus on the presenting problem—the problem or symptom that is causing the patient great distress. A major assumption of behaviour therapy is that abnormal behaviour is acquired in the same way as normal behaviour—that is, by learning. A variety of behavioural techniques have therefore been developed to help patients “unlearn” maladaptive behaviours by one means or another. Techniques used in Behaviour therapy include Exposure therapy, Aversion therapy, Modelling, Systematic use of reinforcement and Token economies. Behaviour therapy ranges wide and is known to be successfully applied in children, adults as well as old age population.