Role of psychotherapy in the management of psychiatric diseases

Abstract

Psychotherapy plays an essential role in the treatment of mental disorders. The use and research of psychological treatment strategies increased drastically over the past decade. The general efficacy of psychotherapy for the treatment of psychiatric diseases is proved and documented in several meta-analyses. Psychotherapy re-searchers have found solutions for acceptable study designs which account for the special character of these interventions and studied the efficacy of psychotherapeutic treatment in more than 1000 intervention trials.Meanwhile evidence-based psychotherapy approaches tailored to a specific diagnosis are dominating the field and question the basis of psychotherapy schools.A new field of research in psychotherapy is the neurobiological basis of mental disorders and the demonstration of neurobiological changes with psycho-therapeutic treatment.