Psyc 242
Paper 2 – Treatment Plan
The patient Elizabeth came in because of a recommendation by her mother. She was experiencing distress, anxiety, and unease because of her parents. About a year ago, the patient overheard her parents talking about getting a divorce, and they would get into very heated arguments. After experiencing this, Elizabeth started to feel very anxious about the divorce, and she started to have an obsession with exercising. Every day, Elizabeth would feel the need to exercise, and she started to make it a habit of exercising. She talked about having difficulty falling asleep, and her obsession with exercising started to affect her school life. She became preoccupied with the thought of exercising that …show more content…
The patient exercises for an hour or more almost every day and eats very little. A measurable goal for treatment would be to limit the amount of time she exercises. For example, instead of exercising every day, limit the amount to 6 times a week and then keep going lower as she obtains the goal. A treatment that I would recommend would be CBT for obsessive-compulsive disorder. The reason I chose this treatment was because it’s the most commonly endorsed therapy approach and a majority of clinicians are using this approach. Another reason that I chose this approach was because of the underlying premise of the approach. Our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are interconnected, and influence one another. It would be useful then to identify the faulty thinking patterns, challenge them, and replaced them. This process would result in changes of feeling and behaviors. The obsessive thought about exercising seems to come very automatically and CBT tries to address this and turn it into more controlled …show more content…
This model of CBT, has two components, exposure and response prevention. The exposure part refers to exposing yourself to the thoughts, images, objects and situations that make you anxious and/or start your obsessions. The response prevention part refers to not acting on that compulsive behavior once the obsessions have been triggered. The patient makes a commitment to not give into the obsessive thoughts and engage in compulsive behaviors. Over time, the anxiety starts to decrease when you don’t engage in that compulsive behavior. The process is called