Mental Disorders: A Case Study

Sally is a 32 year old married woman and a mother of a five year old boy who works a transcriptionist. Her husband works as one of the executive managers with a healthcare organization. Their son was born during her third pregnancy after having previous miscarriages. Her parents got separated when she was 8 years old although she still maintains a good relationship with both of them. In the last two years, she has had difficulties falling asleep. Even those times that she manages to fall asleep, it still does not relieve her as she wakes up feeling exhausted. This has had a great impact in her work and family as she is not longer able to concentrate or to meet her deadlines. It is a cause of concern to her as she is afraid of getting fired.

She suffers from a number of unreasonable fears, which may take longer. According to the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or CBT, there are a number of techniques that can be sued for the treatment of patients exhibiting such disorder characteristics. The concepts of cognitive model indicate that the most common cause of mental disorders is thinking in a dysfunctional way. This means that people tend to have irrational beliefs that influence their subsequent reactions as indicated by Ellis (1977). It can be seen in the case of Sally where she thinks that she is a bad mother based on the two previous miscarriages, she is convinced that her son is sick and does not accept professional medical opinions or the attempts to convince her by her husband. It is these that lead to her unstable behavior and emotions leading to distorted perceptions in

In essence, the first thing should be to establish and maintain confidence between the doctor and the patient. It is vital to give Sally explanations on the nature of her disorder and the explanations that are provided by the CBT. This is done with the application of special techniques that include the Socratic dialogue to show her that her thoughts are irrational to the point that they affect her emotions and her behavior. For Sally, it is significant that her terminated pregnancies are discussed to make her understand that she had nothing to do with the miscarriages. It will help her eliminate the statement that she is a bad mother and that those children did not want her. This stage involves the ability by Sally to monitor her progress by practicing the different thoughts about the situations in her life in the everyday perspective by keeping it in her diary. She should be in a position to describe a specific situation, the feeling of anxiety or fear that is related to it and her subsequent thoughts in this respect. This should be followed by the discussion of these episodes with her