What is multimodal therapy?

Multimodal therapy is a type of psychotherapy that advocates the need to adapt treatment for each individual. The core of this type of therapy is the belief that man, as a biological creature, has different ways of thinking, sensing and feeling from which all this should be considered in the treatment of psychological or behavioral disorders. Multimodal therapy can also be applied to the physiological conditions by combining different approaches and methods when arriving with proper treatment for the patient.

Therapy development is credited by Dr. Arnold Allan Lazarus, a South African psychologist who contributed to the progress of psychology, especially in behavior therapy. During his career, Dr. Lazarus realized that the integration of various features from different ideologies of psychotherapy can help patients get more effective treatment. This concept of integration was initially marked as "broad -spectrum behavioral therapy", later beomiming "multimodal therapy."

To create tailor -made treatment, multimodal therapy usually examines seven different aspects or "modalities" of a person represented in abbreviation "Basic ID". Basic: behavior, affective - or emotional - reaction, sensation, images and knowledge; ID, on the other hand, means interpersonal and drugs/biology. In this way, therapy acknowledges that a certain psychological state affects not only man's behavior and emotions, but also his physiological and mental processes. For example, a depressed person is likely to avoid people and become sad, but can also experience chronic fatigue or insomnia and have negative and critical thoughts about yourself.

To determine the psychological condition of the patient, multimodal therapy usually requires patients to truthfully answer the questionnaire that covers Basic ID factors. The questionnaire will usually come in the form of a Likert scale where patients can choose from numbers, usually from one to five to agree or disagree with the questions. ODHA questionnaire alsoIf there is a predominance of modality over others. For example, if answers in the questionnaire reveal that the patient can respond well with interaction, the psychologist may recommend the patient to have more interpersonal and social activities to treat depression.

Multimodal therapy also considers the personality or temperament of the patient to be a significant factor in the formation of treatment that the patient is most open to. Patients may have the same structural profile from their question, but their personalities will differ, as well as their sensitivity to treatment. One of the advantages of multimodal therapy is that psychologists and therapists do not have to undergo only one psychological ideology, but rather are more open to use different strategies from different ideologies. This form of flexibility is called "technical eclecticism".