Chapter 19. Treatment of Psychological Disorders
Approximate reading time: 1 minute
What comes to mind when you think about therapy, psychologists, or treatment? You might picture someone lying on a couch talking about their childhood while the therapist sits and takes notes, à la Sigmund Freud. But can you envision a therapy session in which someone is wearing virtual reality headgear to conquer a fear of snakes?
In this chapter, you will see that approaches to therapy include both psychological and biological interventions, all with the goal of alleviating distress. Because psychological challenges can originate from various sources — biology, genetics, childhood experiences, conditioning, and sociocultural influences — psychologists have developed many different therapeutic techniques and approaches. Therapy that is accessible online, via an app, is becoming increasingly popular; it allows individuals to access the care and support they need, at a time and place that is convenient to them.
Tranquility is an app developed by co-founders Dr. Alissa Pencer (Clinical Psychologist) and Joel Muise that is now free to all Nova Scotians 16+ who are experiencing mild-to-moderate anxiety and/or depression.
To calculate this time, we used a reading speed of 150 words per minute and then added extra time to account for images and videos. This is just to give you a rough idea of the length of the chapter section. How long it will take you to engage with this chapter will vary greatly depending on all sorts of things (the complexity of the content, your ability to focus, etc).
