Anxiety, personality disorders, phobias, depression, post-traumatic stress syndrome, eating disorders, substance abuse disorders – or typically, a mixture of several ailments and disorders – are all problems that might lead you to see a psychologist.
Your therapist might choose from hundreds of forms of treatment , including psychodynamic therapy, cognitive behavioural therapy, EMDR therapy, ACT therapy, gestalt therapy, interpersonal psychotherapy, mindfulness-based therapy, psychodrama – and more.
The many options might seem logical. It is easy to imagine that different therapy approaches are used to treat different disorders.
Henrik Berg has a background in psychology and philosophy and works as a professor at the University of Bergen (UiB).
He says that the hundreds of available treatment types can be divided into five main groups.
There’s behavioural therapy, cognitive therapy, psychodynamic and psychoanalytic therapy, humanistic therapy and eclectic therapy, which mixes a little bit from various forms, he says.
Berg says that these methods can yield quite different answers, for example depending on what the goal of the therapy is or what characterizes the illness and recovery.
