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Anxiety Disorders
Anxiety is a natural and helpful emotion that helps us to discern and react to real danger. Anxiety disorders happen when the emotional response is excessive and/or not appropriate to the situation. Patients with these disorders often magnify the level of danger in a situation, and worry excessively about these dangers while disqualifying their own ability to manage them.
Cognitive behavioral therapy employs thought restructuring and exposure based techniques to facilitate accurate interpretations of stressful situations and to build one’s skills and beliefs in their ability to face difficult situations. These strategies encourage people to face fear and build a higher tolerance for anxiety and worrying, which then allows them to reach their longer-term goals.
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Behavioral Problems
Behavior problems are seen in children and adults. The first step for adults and children is the completion of a thorough functional behavioral assessment (FBA). Cognitive, behavioral, contextual, social, medical, perceptual, and other relevant variables are taken into account. With an adult, most often a functional assessment of the behavior problem can be done together with the therapist, but with children it is very helpful to have parents and other important people such as the teacher provide information for the FBA. A treatment directly based on the FBA is then developed and implemented in collaboration with the patient, family, and school as needed. Assessment and treatment of the problems listed below usually involve a collaboration with medical professionals as well.
Psychological Problems in Children and Adolescents
All children have problems at some point during childhood or adolescence. They might experience periods of anxiety or fearfulness, problems getting along with peers, parents or other adults, problems succeeding in school or problems with their daily functioning. For many children these problems are solved without significant intervention. Other children and families can greatly benefit from cognitive-behavioral therapy to correctly assess the problem and work to resolve it. For these children, difficulties are severe enough to impact their academic, social, or emotional development. At LICCT, the parents are always very involved in the treatment of their child.
Children can suffer from the Mood Disorders as discussed in the Mood Disorders section of this website. With children, however, irritability is often a key indicator of bad mood and diagnosing Bipolar Disorder is very difficult. Children can also suffer from any of the Anxiety Disorders discussed in the Anxiety Disorders Section. The following is a list of psychological problems in addition to Mood and Anxiety Disorders that are usually first seen in childhood or during adolescence that are often treated at LICCT.
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Developmental Disorders
Developmental Disorders, by definition are always diagnosed during a child's development (ages 0 to about 11 years). These disorders are pervasive. That is they have a negative impact on many of a child's areas of functioning such as language, coordination, learning, behavioral flexibility, adaptableness, sensory systems, and social skills. These problems can be very mild or subtle, or severe and debilitating. The early and accurate diagnosis of a developmental disorder in childhood is essential because these disorders are most successfully treated if the treatment starts when the child is as young as possible.
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Life Adjustment
Throughout life, people encounter obstacles to their happiness, quality of life, and ability to function. These difficulties can be found in relationships, at important life crossroads such as marriage, changing jobs, divorce, having a child, loss, graduation, confronting a mid life crisis or getting old. Certain individuals also experience prejudice and exclusion by society because of their sexual, political, or behavioral preferences and this can lead to alienation and self deprecation. The process and techniques of cognitive behavioral therapy are especially helpful for these problems since the therapist and patient actively collaborate to examine how a person's thoughts and behaviors can minimize such negative feelings.
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Mood Disorders
Mood can be referred to as a persons present emotional tone or emotional state, or specifically how a person feels in general on the continuum from very sad, to ecstatically happy. A state of excessive unhappiness or extreme happiness that lasts too long can be very disturbing, and can have a tremendously negative impact on a person’s ability to function. The successful regulation and maintenance of emotions and feelings and moods is essential to a good quality of life.
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