Lecture
The preventive approach in the psychotherapy of crisis states consists in preventing or mitigating the negative consequences of a crisis, as well as strengthening a person’s psychological resilience to future stressful situations. This approach is oriented not only toward treating existing problems, but also toward preventing them. Here is the essence of the preventive approach:
Early intervention: Preventive psychotherapy can begin before the crisis reaches its peak. This makes it possible to identify and address the preceding factors and symptoms that could lead to a crisis, and to prevent its development.
Teaching stress-management skills: The psychotherapist helps the client develop stress-management strategies adapted to their specific needs. This may include teaching relaxation techniques, meditation, as well as improving problem-solving and communication skills.
Support and understanding: The preventive approach includes creating a supportive and trusting atmosphere in which the client feels that their emotions and concerns are respected and understood. This contributes to resolving the situation before it becomes a crisis.
Planning for the future: The psychotherapist and the client work together on developing plans for the future, in order to strengthen psychological resilience and forestall possible crises. This may include identifying resources, support networks, and strategies for coping with future challenges.
Working through past traumas: If the crisis has its roots in past traumatic events, preventive psychotherapy may include working on reprocessing these traumas and reducing their impact on the client’s current state.
Self-analysis and awareness: The client is taught to independently analyse their own thoughts, emotions, and reactions, which helps prevent negative cycles and recognise the warning signs of a crisis.
The essence of the preventive approach in the psychotherapy of crisis states.
Principles of the preventive approach:
Distinguishing features of the strategic or preventive approach. An active stance on the part of the psychologist. A focus on group methods of psychological help (“blanket help”). The absence of psychopharmacotherapeutic agents, as well as of hospitalisation. The importance of basic human needs. Extended sessions. Viewing psychological symptoms as normal reactions to abnormal situations. Regarding the affected not as patients, but as people who have other needs.
In the preventive approach one should take into account: that the affected are not recognised as victims in society; that there is a lack of information about the event itself and about how this event is experienced by the person themselves; that the affected not infrequently misuse medications; and that in tragic
situations there is no possibility of performing rituals.
The psychologist must know:
In its practical part, these categories determine the psychologist’s stance in providing psychological help. The strategic (preventive) paradigm in psychotherapy can serve as a principle for the psychologist’s work after a traumatic event. Its main distinguishing feature from the traditional or psychotherapeutic paradigm − is a commitment to an active approach. The signal for providing the necessary psychological help should be some fragment of reality that becomes an event, a crisis event, for the person. The psychologist must have lists of such events, and work is under way both abroad and in our country to compile lists of traumatic events. Commitment to an active stance places demands on the location where rehabilitation measures are carried out − it is extremely desirable to provide help at the site of the event or, failing that, in surroundings
familiar to those affected. The timing of the help provided also matters, since it has been established that help is most effective when provided no less than 72 hours after
the event. A group approach to providing psychological
help is more acceptable, especially at the initial stage.
The distinguishing feature of the preventive approach in psychotherapy, as used in crisis psychology, consists in the following. The method of crisis psychology works with the event that caused these states. The emergence of neurosis is connected with the fact that the person did not find within themselves the courage
to admit into the cognitive component of their self-awareness the fragment of reality that is traumatising them. Cultivating the courage to be in spite of − is the strategic goal of the crisis psychologist’s work. Hence also the approach to determining the effectiveness of the method. Not so much the removal of symptoms, which may or may not be a criterion of effectiveness, but the realisation that one must accept the event, coexist with it, and build new connections in place of those lost. For it is precisely these factors that give rise to the negative symptoms. And all of this is provided for, built into the methodological procedures for providing psychological help in crisis situations. Thus, in the most widespread technique used in crisis psychology, “Psychological Debriefing”, the whole of the work is brought to the stage of readaptation, in which a perspective on the path of life after the event is constructed. Building one’s own path is the main signal that the work carried out
is connected with working through the facts, thoughts, feelings, and symptoms that arose in connection with the event, and was successful. In other words, the technique of
“Psychological Debriefing” has built into it a diagnostic criterion for the effectiveness of the technique itself.
The preventive approach in the psychotherapy of crisis states is oriented toward preventing problems, strengthening psychological resilience, and improving the client’s quality of life. This helps people cope better with life’s challenges and prevent serious crises.
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