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I enjoyed our discussion on Tuesday night about psychotherapy. This discussion is of particular interest to me because I may be attending graduate school in a Doctor of Psychology program this fall- and in these programs, I am trained in different types of psychotherapy- cognitive-behavioral, psychodynamic, & family systems therapy. I am very excited about learning these techniques, and I really enjoyed hearing Dr. Yadin discuss her experiences with psychotherapy, specifically cognitive behavioral therapy. One thing I think it is important to keep in mind is that there is no one therapy that has been proven to be the best type of therapy for everything (all disorders)-but instead it is important to value each type of therapy for its strengths. For example, cognitive-behavioral therapy has proven to be extremely successful for OCD- however, CBT may not be the best choice for all types of psychological disorders. As a future clinical child psychologist, I want to learn about and be trained in different types of therapies so that I can use the most appropriate therapy for each patient depending on the patient and the patient's disorder. I value all different types of psychotherapy. I would be interested to see what brain changes occur for different types of therapy (other than CBT) like for psychodynamic therapy. And, I think comparing brain changes between different types of therapies that are being used to treat the same disorder would also be interesting.

I really liked Dr. Yadin's idea of using the brain to fix/ heal itself- as a first line of treatment- then if that does not work, maybe then considering employing drugs. The brain is the most "plastic" organ in the body and that is a such an important feature, and ultimately allows us to use our own brains to help our selves & our own brain.

And, during our discussion of psychopharmocology, I think Prof. Morris brought up a very important point- when we effect one molecule (or target one molecule) with a drug, it is bound to effect many other molecules and pathways downstream- I think this is important to consider when using drugs to treat psychological disorders- although we think we know exactly what molecules or chemicals are in an "imbalance" we probably are not seeing the whole picture because molecules and chemicals in the brain and body work together and effect each other- and they are not working alone in a vacuum. I think more studies should be done to figure out exactly what other molecules, chemicals, and pathways these drugs that attempt to "target one molecule" are effecting. These down stream effects may shed light on the delay of the therapeutic effect of these drugs and drug side effects.