In today’s world, mental illness and distress are common and these account for a significant burden of disability within our community. At the same time, there is a growing interest in understanding and enhancing positive mental health and wellbeing; particularly from developments in the fields of positive psychology and mental health promotion. Positive Psychiatry is a new term (Jeste et al 2016) that describes a dual approach to mental health, where we build strengths, supports and healthy lifestyles as well as treating illness and distress. In this course, we will explore different aspects of good mental health as well as provide an overview of the major kinds of mental disorders, their causes, treatments and how to seek help and support. The course will feature a large number of Australian experts in psychiatry, psychology and mental health research, and we will also hear from “lived experience experts”, people who have lived with mental illness, and share their personal stories of recovery. We take an evidence-based approach to a range of strategies that anyone can use to enhance their own mental health and that of others, from exercise and relaxation techniques through to the role of love, relationships and 'good' types of work. We cover topics from creativity and yoga through to psychiatric medications and psychotherapies.
Psychotherapies
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From the course by The University of Sydney
Positive Psychiatry and Mental Health
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From the lesson
Module 4 - Mental Illness
In this module, we cover the major categories of mental illness: their symptoms, causes and treatments. This includes the more common conditions such as anxiety, depression and addictions, as well as less common mental illnesses such as psychosis, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
Meet the Instructors
Sonia KumarPsychiatry Course Coordinator
Brain and Mind Centre, University of Sydney
[MUSIC]
Good day, I'm going to talk today about psychotherapy, which is a very
important possible treatment to improve mental health and work towards recovery.
There are many kinds of therapies that range from providing important support,
to which other treatments may be added, through help with changing thinking,
feeling, behavior, strengthening our sense of help.
Helping us develop our flexibility and
resilience, and to help us resolve losses and traumas.
In many other MOOC talks, you will have heard about how important
relationships are for our development as a young person, and
then throughout our life and for our well-being.
I've talked about the way that they shape our early attachment relationships.
And how at times of stress or
trauma, much of our best recovery is done in relationships.
We are social beings.
Tony Corneau has spoken about the way we connect with another person
to creatively grow our sense of selves.
So simply put, psychotherapy is where someone who is a trained clinician
meets with us to connect in a positive way, to help us with aspects of ourselves.
While we know this connecting is good medicine,
we are more than ever aware that it's good science and an art.
[MUSIC]
When some people think of psychotherapy, they think of psychoanalytic therapy.
And that's certainly where we have learned a lot about psychotherapy.
Sigmund Freud, in his work at the beginning of the last century, was trying
to help people recover from troubling psychiatric and neurological symptoms.
He found hypnosis useful.
But then discovered the talking cure, whereby he asked the patient
to say whatever came into their mind while he deeply listened.
And then said something when he thought it was useful,
making links between past experience and current thoughts, feelings and behaviors.
He found that many patterns of behavior and
symptoms had some of their origin in childhood.
This kind of therapy considered that our minds are dynamic and changing but
can get stuck in certain kinds of patterns of relating, thinking, and feeling.
The idea of psychodynamics is that sometimes we don't know
why we feel, think, or do something.
We're not conscious of how it came about.
We learned it back then.
But now we need to change.
That was then, this is now.
And we need a different kind of response in being.
So psychoanalytic therapy and psychodynamic therapy have continued,
to this day, to pay close attention to building a therapeutic relationship
where someone who can speak their mind safely.
And work with the psychotherapist to know themselves more and
shift stuck patterns, to become conscious, free, and flexible.
This form of therapy recognizes that we tend to repeat our earliest relationships.
Those attachment templates we spoke about in an earlier talk
can become activated in certain circumstances.
Therapy offers a chance to notice when they're activated
between therapist and patient, for example.
The patient might get angry when their feeling dismissed by the psychotherapist.
And together, they might come to realize that dismissing was something that,
for example, the patient's father or mother often did.
In feeling it, thinking about it, and reflecting on it together,
the patient often shifts in how they feel and resolves some of the old hurt.
And if hurt happens, learns to handle it more directly in the relationship.
You can possibly understand that this kind of close emotional and
thinking work takes a sense of safety and trust.
This is why most psychotherapies happen with an agreed contract about how we
will meet.
The participants usually try and meet at the same time and
in the same place, to build a sense of reliability and trust.
When there are shifts in that frame,
how we feel about it would be noted in a psychodynamic therapy and given meaning.
If I miss my therapist when they're on leave or
feel anxious, that doesn't mean a dangerous dependence.
But it's something that I would bring back to discuss with him or
her at our next meeting.
Many kinds of psychotherapy have now emerged that come at that challenge of
building up our mental health from all sorts of models and ways of understanding.
One of the big ones is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy,
which is based in our understanding that we learn so much that shapes us.
And if we take the time to unpack those thoughts and feelings and
behaviors that seem automatic, we will notice that we can shift them.
It is therapy that seeks to build us up through discussion, practice,
and homework.
And the therapist can seem a little like a coach, encouraging us towards change and
skill building and new learning, while helping keep us on track.
Other forms of therapy these days are based on mindfulness and
we have spoken about this.
Other therapies acknowledge that we live and grow in families.
And so the therapist engages with the family or couple.
To help those people live, love, work, and play more comfortably together.
Other therapies encourage us to accept in a radical way that difficult stuff
has happened, so we're then free to live in the moment now.
Now, you could probably realize that for some people who have never felt safe,
psychotherapy can seem particularly daunting, terrifying even.
However, it is one of the ways that we can really have a positive experience
of relationship, if we're ready and stable enough in our other supports.
Sometimes we use therapy as a pre-therapy to build supports.
The keys to a successful psychotherapy for us as consumers, carers,
and clinicians is in knowing what the choices around therapy are,
what the therapy is trying to achieve.
Having a good connection with a trained and supervised psychotherapist.
And planning ahead for
times that might be stressful or
difficult with a good care plan.
[MUSIC]
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