Determining Treatment Methods.

Determining Treatment Methods

As you decide which methods to use in working with a particular client, you also decide how to focus the treatment. Do you focus on a client’s particular problem or issue, or do you look beyond specific problems, recognizing patterns of behavior that underlie the difficulty? Deciding between a focus on relatively specific problem solving or an attempt to change a client’s overall approach to functioning in the world may lead to significant differences in the time periods needed for therapy. A treatment that focuses on a client’s overall functioning may take more time, sometimes quite a lot more time. In addition, as you make decisions based on the needs of your clients, you must also take into account their financial resources, as well as the nature of their health insurance and the treatment policies of your agency.

Mander (2000) states that one of the greatest challenges therapists face is “the dilemma of how much therapy will be enough for individual patients, of how to begin wisely in order to end appropriately, and how to ensure a satisfactory and lasting outcome” (p. 302). For this week’s Discussion, you address this challenge as you explain how you determined the nature of a client’s treatment plan and compare and contrast your decision making process with those in this week’s Learning Resources.

With these thoughts in mind:

Post by Day 4 an explanation of potential strategies you might use to determine whether a client needs short-term or long-term treatment, or a combination of both. Then, describe a real situation (being sure to disguise any identifying information about the client) in which you made this distinction. Explain what guided your decision-making process. Finally, compare your decision-making process with a process described in this week’s Learning Resources.

Be sure to support your postings and responses with specific references to the Learning Resources, citing all references in APA format.