October 11, 2024

Treatment in practice

Welcome treatment to the website of “Wege zur Psychotherapie”. With this patient information, the BPtK provides basic information on how psychotherapists can help with psychological complaints and illnesses of adults. She explains comprehensibly when a first appointment with a psychotherapist is advisable and when treatment is necessary.

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The treatment in the practicep4809162022-08-30T11:38:11+02:00Focus on the conversation

Psychotherapists will talk to you. They exchange ideas with you about your well-being, your thoughts, feelings and wishes. Many patients ask themselves at the beginning: “Is that enough?”, “Does it help to just talk?”.

Experience shows that it helps much more than most patients who start psychotherapy for the first time think possible. There are two reasons for this: Talking to each other helps you to find words for the thoughts, feelings and desires and to express what is on your mind. In the conversation, the psychotherapist asks you to find words for what moves you inside. It is possible that in psychotherapy you perceive and express thoughts and feelings for the first time that you yourself were not even aware of before. This allows you to perceive yourself and what you experience differently or more accurately. This “perception of what moves internally” and exchanging ideas with the psychotherapist is a first important step in psychotherapy.

Then it can be a matter of considering together with the psychotherapist what you want to change in the way you deal with yourself and others and what makes the change difficult. Change is not easy, often it is rather difficult. The psychotherapist supports you in imagining possible changes and dealing with them. You try out what you want to do differently than before and discuss this with your psychotherapist. This makes it easier for you to succeed in changing your behaviour in everyday life.

In psychotherapy, on the one hand, you develop a therapeutic relationship that helps you to get involved with the unknown of your soul life. At the same time, you are better able to recognize patterns in your behavior and relationships that have been stressful for your previous life. Or you can learn practical exercises that will help you better cope with stresses and problems in your life. That’s why psychotherapists talk to you. Psychotherapists consider such talking to each other to be the most effective means of curing psychological complaints and illnesses.

Your psychotherapist may not tell anyone about what you discuss in psychotherapy – not your employer, not your life partner or other relatives, unless you expressly want to.

Psychotherapists are subject to confidentiality, i.e. they are prohibited from passing on personal information about patients to others without their express consent (§ 203 of the Criminal Code). Breach of confidentiality is punishable by imprisonment of up to one year or a fine.

»Finding words for thoughts, feelings and desires and expressing what is on your mind.«

New: Health apps in psychotherapy

There are countless apps on the Internet that are supposed to help with mental complaints or illnesses. For the layman, it is difficult to assess whether such health apps are useful or perhaps have harmful side effects and how personal information is handled. That’s why health apps are now being tested by the state. They can be looked up in a directory of the Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices (diga.bfarm.de/ de/verzeichnis). In addition to apps that are still under review, you will also find apps that have been found to be effective and safe. These tested apps (“Digital Health Applications”) may be prescribed to you by a psychotherapist or doctor. Then the statutory health insurance companies cover the costs.

But before you use an app, you should seek advice from a psychotherapist. She can tell you whether it makes sense for your illness, for example, that you do exercises independently between treatments in the practice at home with a recommended app. The prerequisite for this is that you can retreat undisturbed into a room. Others shouldn’t be able to see what you’re typing. You can use most apps on a smartphone, tablet, laptop or PC. To do this, you’ll need to download them from an app store or the app provider’s website. If your psychotherapist has prescribed you a tested app, you can request an activation code from your health insurance company. As a result, you will not incur any costs for the use of the app.New: Treatment also possible via video

Psychotherapeutic treatment usually takes place in the immediate opposite in psychotherapeutic practice. This type of treatment is best suited for most patients. However, if you travel a lot for work, for example, individual hours of psychotherapeutic treatment can also be carried out via video call. This is also possible if you are physically ill and you do not make it to the practice. Or the path to practice is so far and time-consuming that you are overwhelmed with it. You should discuss this together with your psychotherapist.

For the first consultation hours, however, you must definitely come to the practice. In these initial consultations, your symptoms will be diagnosed and it will be discussed whether and which treatment is advisable. In any case, this requires direct personal contact between patient and psychotherapist. Afterwards, individual lessons with your psychotherapist can also be conducted via video call. Whether this is advisable in your case, you can discuss with your psychotherapist.

To carry out therapy sessions via video, you need a PC, laptop or a larger tablet. With a smartphone, the size of the screen is usually not enough. Your computer must have a camera, microphone, and speaker. For video treatment, the software of a verified provider must be used, whose programs meet particularly strict data protection requirements. Your psychotherapist uses a tested program for this purpose. It explains which website you visit and which code you have to enter there to dial into the video call. It is important that you can retreat undisturbed into a room for the treatment. Others should not be able to overhear what you say.

For example, if you download a health app for depression from an app store, the operator knows you’ve done so. He can use this information for his company purposes, for example, to send you targeted advertising about other offers against depression.

Most mental illnesses develop over weeks, months and often years. Their treatment also often takes months or years. The treatment of a mental illness is usually more complex the longer it already exists. A newly occurring depressive disorder may therefore be treated more quickly than a chronic depression that you were already suffering from in your youth.

As a rule, you should be prepared for a treatment period of several months. During this time, you will usually receive one 50-minute treatment (“session”) a week, sometimes several. In the final phase of therapy, longer intervals between sessions may also be useful.

Basically, psychotherapy distinguishes between short-term and long-term therapies. Your psychotherapist will discuss with you what duration of treatment she considers advisable for you. For both short-term and long-term therapy, an application must be submitted to the health insurance company (see “The application to the health insurance company”).