Psychotherapy is a form of mental health care that aims to help you overcome emotional and behavioral problems or to cope with life issues. It is a type of counseling that involves talking with a trained mental health professional about your concerns and emotional issues. Your Midtown East licensed psychotherapist uses the correct type of psychotherapy to make you feel better and improve your quality of life by helping you address emotional problems and develop new skills for handling these issues.
Psychotherapy is an effective treatment for several mental disorders. Some of the most common mental health concerns that psychotherapy can help with include:
Depression
Depression can be an overwhelming feeling that impacts your ability to function normally in daily activities. It is common for people who suffer from depression to experience feelings of hopelessness and sadness, which can lead to social isolation and poor nutrition habits. Psychotherapy may help address these symptoms by helping you recognize the root cause of your feelings, identify triggers, and develop strategies for coping with them.
Anxiety
Anxiety is another common mental health concern that doctors can treat through psychotherapy. Anxiety may manifest in physical symptoms such as headaches or stomach problems, but it also involves psychological symptoms such as nervousness or feeling on edge. Through counseling sessions, you can learn ways to cope with your anxiety symptoms, so you feel less stressed about everyday situations, such as dinner at a restaurant or meeting new people at work.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a mental health condition that causes you to experience recurrent thoughts that you must complete an action or series of activities, such as hand washing. The thoughts often cause significant distress and anxiety. People with OCD may also feel compelled to perform rituals, such as repeating a word or phrase repeatedly.
Psychotherapy can help with OCD by helping you learn how to deal with intrusive thoughts and reassure yourself that the obsessions are not harmful or dangerous.
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a serious, chronic, and debilitating mental illness that affects about 1% of the population at some point in their lives. Schizophrenia is characterized by abnormal symptoms, including delusions (false beliefs), hallucinations (hearing or seeing things that aren’t there), disorganized speech and behavior, and inappropriate emotional responses.
If left untreated, schizophrenia can lead to permanent disability, suicide, and death. However, psychotherapy can help with the symptoms of schizophrenia by teaching you how to cope with the illness and encouraging you to take control of your life. Psychotherapy helps improve how your brain functions so that it is normal again. Psychotherapy may also help reduce the risk of relapse after treatment by teaching coping skills for when symptoms return.
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental health condition that can develop after exposure to a terrifying event. It can be triggered by events involving death or injury, such as war and natural disasters. Symptoms of PTSD include intrusive thoughts, flashbacks, nightmares, avoidance of situations or reminders of the traumatic event, increased arousal, hypervigilance, and heightened startle response.
Psychotherapy is not a quick fix. It requires time and patience to work through the issues at hand. But it offers significant benefits over medication alone by helping you get to know yourself better and work through your problems in a way that you can maintain long-term. Contact Healthy Minds NYC and book an appointment with a psychotherapist to learn more about psychotherapy.
