Week 7 56640

Supportive Psychotherapy versus Interpersonal Psychotherapy

With the rising cases of mental disorders, there has been an increasing urge for healthcare providers to assess the efficacy of the approaches used in psychotherapy. This is intended to help in the identification of the strategy that will be effective in assisting patients who are suffering from psychiatric disorders. Two of the common approaches that are used in helping the patients is supportive psychotherapy and interpersonal psychotherapy. Herein, this paper will seek to discuss the similarities of the approaches, the differences, and the effective strategy that could be selected for helping patients. 

How supportive and interpersonal psychotherapies are similar

Both supportive psychotherapy and interpersonal psychotherapy are important and seek to bring therapeutic impact to the patients who have psychiatric disorders. Whiting et al. (2019) argue that the use of supportive psychotherapy by a healthcare provider is intended to help in the enhancement of the adaptive and health patterns of the patients with the objective of reducing the cases of intrapsychic conflict. The interpersonal approach as well seeks to resolve the interpersonal problems that a patient may have. These intend to help the patient in attaining a healthy state if thinking. 

Three differences between these therapies and how these differences might impact practice as a mental health counselor

One of the differences is that the use of supportive approach involves the adherence to a time-limited approach that is structured and takes three to four months but the supportive approach is not structured and makes use of a combination of cognitive behavior and conceptual approach. The focus of the supportive approach is to ensure that the patient is able to have an improved standard of health while interpersonal approach aims at identifying and bringing a resolution to a problem that has prevailed. This infers that there will be a need for the therapists to have an evaluation of the relational aspects of psychiatric disorder patients (Bombardier et al., 2019). 

The therapeutic approach that might be used with clients and why

The therapeutic approach that will be useful in this case will be the interpersonal approach. I prefer to make use of this approach as a nurse therapist in addressing the challenges that are presented by patients with psychiatric disorders. This is attributed to the fact that the approach puts stress on the importance of interpersonal relationships. Psychiatric disorders as per Marrie et al. (2015) are mainly developed by lack of an effective interpersonal relationship. Along these lines, tackling the issue will help in resolving the issue of the patients. The selection is as well attributed to the fact that in considering interpersonal relationships one is able to consider the issues of mood changes and the behavioral changes of a patient which are the main aspects that contribute to psychiatric disorders.