Psychological treatment for stress: the 5 types of therapy used

What does psychological treatment for stress look like? Let us look at its proposals and characteristics.

In the 21st century, anxiety, depression and stress have skyrocketed in terms of the number of people suffering from any of these conditions related to mental health that can significantly affect the quality of life, so it is of utmost importance that psychological treatments are applied to address them effectively.

A psychological treatment for stress is used to treat those mental disorders that are specifically related to stress and, at the same time, usually developed as a result of the patient's exposure to a stressful or traumatic event or situation.

This article will explain some of the psychological treatments that have been developed to address disorders that are specifically associated with stress.

The main psychological treatments for stress

These are the psychological treatments most commonly used in the face of stress problems.

1. Stress inoculation training (STI).

A psychological treatment for stress is the program known as stress inoculation training and is based on patients learning strategies and skills for coping and managing the anxiety suffered in relation to post-traumatic stress that people who have been victims of rape may suffer.

It should be noted that this psychological treatment for traumatic stress is not especially focused on the thoughts or memories associated with the trauma suffered by the patients, but is centered on teaching and training coping skills. is focused on the teaching and training of coping skills, being carried out through a program with a duration of approximately 10 to 14 sessions..

This is a psychological treatment for post-traumatic stress that is divided into three main phases: the educational phase, the training phase and the generalization phase.

In the first phase, the psychoeducational phase, the psychotherapist aims to provide all the necessary information about the mechanisms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) based on models that explain this disorder from the perspective of learning theories and the characteristics of stress coping mechanisms.

The second, training phase, is where patients learn and patients learn and train a series of coping strategies for anxious responses (e.g., breathing techniques, progressive Muscle relaxation, cognitive restructuring and visualization techniques, among others). (e.g., breathing techniques, progressive muscle relaxation, cognitive restructuring and visualization techniques, among others).

Finally, the generalization phase, which is the moment when patients must put into practice those coping skills, which they have trained in the second phase, in everyday life and by performing a series of tasks that the psychotherapist has given them in order to put into practice those skills and techniques that they have been training during the treatment.

2. Present-Centered Therapy (TCP)

The therapy focused on the present is a psychological treatment for stress, whose main objective is that the patient gets to understand how stress has come to influence the way he/she interacts with other people in a maladaptive way, so that he/she can learn new, more adaptive and functional ways of interacting with others.The main objective is that the patient can learn new, more adaptive and functional ways of interacting with other people in a maladaptive way, so that he/she can learn new, more adaptive and functional ways of interacting in interpersonal relationships while having more control over him/herself.

On the other hand, besides being used this therapy in order to improve the interpersonal relationships of each patient, it is used so that the patient learns to naturalize the symptoms of his or her symptomsIt is also used to promote an increase in self-confidence and a sense of mastery over his or her life and the situations he or she faces on a daily basis.

This psychological treatment for stress is a type of intervention that is explained in detail in a manual that has been developed for that purpose and is recommended to be carried out with a frequency of one session every week, with a duration of 1 hour and 30 minutes.

This treatment also incorporates techniques such as behavioral activation, cognitive restructuring or exposure techniques. In addition, another objective of this therapy is to guide the patient to focus on the here and now, in order to be able to focus on their cognitive and emotional states, so that they can develop introspection skills to be able to identify and talk about them in therapy.

Once achieved, the patient should be trained to increase his or her tolerance to stressful states, so that he or she does not seek escape routes that could be harmful.

3. EMDR therapy

EMDR therapy or "Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing" is a psychological treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder that has been recognized as one of the first-choice treatments for this disorder by several major guidelines (e.g., the World Health Organization (WHO), the American Psychological Association (APA), among others).

EMDR therapy is largely based on the hypothesis that a post-traumatic stress disorder has developed largely due to incomplete processing of those lived experiences related to the disturbing or traumatic event and/or due to dysfunctional storage in memory of the lived experience.The reason for this is that there has been an alteration in the person's capacity to keep them integrated in his or her memory in an adaptive way.

EMDR is a psychological treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder that is divided into 8 phases in order to address the symptoms derived from stressful situations that have not been processed correctly. These phases are as follows: collection of the patient's history, preparation, assessment of traumatic memories, desensitization, installation, body examination, closure and reassessment. It should be noted that EMDR seeks the processing of somatic, emotional and cognitive aspects at the same level.

4. Psychological debriefing therapy

This psychological treatment for stress is used with the objective of prevent and mitigate the psychological consequences of traumatic events experienced by people working on the front line (e.g. health workers during the coronavirus pandemic, army soldiers on an international mission, personnel working on the front line to help those affected by the volcano eruption). (e.g. health care workers during the coronavirus pandemic, army soldiers on an international mission, personnel who worked on the front line to help those affected by the eruption of the La Palma volcano in 2021, or any other worker whose job exposes them to potentially stressful situations that can be traumatic).

This treatment has been developed in order to help those people who have been on the front line to** deal with the smells, thoughts, smells, memories, emotions and physical sensations that were associated with a stressful and/or traumatic incident**. It is also used within approximately 24 to 72 hours after the incident has stabilized, with the possibility of follow-up psychological therapy sessions if necessary.

In an event of this nature, it is important to provide psychological assistance to all those affected; however, it would be appropriate to separate those affected according to the level of exposure and impact they have had by the incident suffered.

The phases of psychological debriefing therapy are as follows: introduction phase, recounting of events, thoughts and impressions, emotional reactions, normalization, planning for the future and coping, and finally the dissolution of the group.

It should also be noted that this therapy serves as an urgent intervention in cases of people who have suffered traumatic events in the first line; however, it is important that they attend therapy for as long as they need if they require it.

5. Cognitive processing therapy

Cognitive processing therapy is a psychological treatment for stress based on a largely cognitive intervention to help people who are suffering from PTSD and to also address the feelings of guilt associated associated with this psychological disorder. It is also theoretically based on social-cognitive theories related to PTSD and is used to understand how the traumatic event is interpreted by the person and also how they cope with it.

On the other hand, Cognitive Processing Therapy seeks to help people suffering from PTSD regain a sense of control and mastery over their lives. and, during the intervention, psychological techniques such as cognitive restructuring are used to address the person's belief system associated with the traumatic event as well as the circumstances related to the event.

This psychological treatment for stress is carried out over 12 sessions and the sessions can be carried out both in groups and individually, using some techniques such as those listed below: psychoeducation, Socratic dialogue, written narrative of the trauma, among others.