Therapy in the digital age

"Recalibrating Therapy for Our Wired World" is one psychiatrist's take on the changes forced on the practice by 21st century digital connectivity:

For some, the new technology is clearly a boon. Let’s say you have the common anxiety disorder social phobia. You avoid speaking up in class or at work, fearful you’ll embarrass yourself, and the prospect of going to a party inspires dread. You will do anything to avoid social interactions. 

You see a therapist who sensibly recommends cognitive-behavioral therapy, which will challenge your dysfunctional thoughts about how people see you and as a result lower your social anxiety. You find that this treatment involves a fair amount of homework: You typically have to keep a written log of your thoughts and feelings to examine them. And since you see your therapist weekly, most of the work is done solo. 

As it turns out, there is a smartphone app that will prompt you at various times during the day to record these social interactions and your emotional response to them. You can take the record to your therapist, and you are off and running... 

When it comes to collecting and organizing data, software is hard to beat. But information has a tendency to spread, especially digital information. To wit, electronic medical data containing sensitive personal information can be released, either accidentally or deliberately, and disseminated. Anyone who has followed the hacking of supposedly secure and encrypted financial databases knows this is not a remote possibility.

Interesting.

Aversion Therapy

Aversion Therapy
Aversion Therapy is a behavioral therapy. It is one of the group therapies that attempt to change undesirable/destructive behavior. These undesirable behaviors come about because we associate them with pleasure, the brain learns that, let's say substance abuse makes the person feel relaxed and lowers our stress levels.
Aversion therapy is a form of treatment that utilizes behavioral principles to eliminate unwanted behavior. In this unwanted method, the unwanted stimulus is repeatedly paired with discomfort. The goal of the conditioning process is to make the individual associate the stimulus with unpleasant or uncomfortable sensation.
During aversion therapy, the client may be asked to think of or engage in the behavior they enjoy while at the same time being exposed to something unpleasant feelings. Once the unpleasant feelings become associated with the behavior, the hope is that the unwanted behavior or action will begin to decrease in frequency or stop entirely.

Meaning of Aversion Therapy
Aversion Therapy is a form of psychiatric treatment in which the patient is exposed to a stimulus while simultaneously being subjected to some form of discomfort. This conditioning is intended to cause the patient to associate the stimulus with unpleasant sensation, and to then stop certain behavior.

Purpose
As with other therapies, aversion therapy is a treatment grounded in learning theory-one of its basic principles being that all behavior is learned and that undesirable behavior can be unlearned under the right circumstances the goal of aversion therapy is to reduce or eliminate undesirable behavior. Treatment focuses on changing a specific behavior itself. The behaviors that have been treated include such addictions as alcohol abuse, drug abuse, smoking and pathological gambling, sexual deviations, etc.


Different Methods 

• Chemical and Pharmacological stimulants
• Electric Shock Method
• Insight-oriented approaches( Verbal Aversion Therapy)