Contemporary approaches to therapy Modern mental health professionals have abandoned the old demon model and frankly abusive treatments in favor of therapies based on psychological and biological theories of mind and behavior. Yet the professionals often disagree on the exact causes and appropriate treatments. They focus on changing disordered thoughts, feelings and behavior using psychological techniques rather than biological interventions. Behavioral therapy treats the problem behaviors themselves as disturbances that must be modified. Disorders are viewed as learned habit patterns rather than as the symptoms of some underlying mental disease.
Behavior therapists believe that changing problematic behavior corrects the disorder.
Among the insight therapies, cognitive therapy tries to restructure how a person thinks by altering distorted self-statements a person makes about the causes of a problem. As compared with behavior therapy, the emphasis in cognitive therapy is internal, rather than on external circumstances and behaviors. In another group of insight therapies, the psychodynamic approaches view mental disorders as the outer symptoms of unresolved childhood traumas and inner conflicts. Insight therapies emerging from the humanistic tradition emphasize the self-concept, needs and values of the patient. Humanistic therapies are directed toward self-actualization and psychological growth.