Case Study: Read this Case Study about “Mike”
Mike is a 20-year-old who reports to you that he feels depressed and is experiencing a significant amount of stress about school, noting that he’ll “probably flunk out.” He spends much of his day in his dorm room playing video games and has a hard time identifying what, if anything, is enjoyable in a typical day. He rarely attends class and has avoided reaching out to his professors to try to salvage his grades this semester. Mike has always been a self-described shy person and has had a very small and cohesive group of friends from elementary through high school. Notably, his level of stress was significantly amplified when he began college. You learn that when meeting new people, he has a hard time concentrating on the interaction because he is busy worrying about what they will think of him – he assumes they will find him “dumb,” “boring,” or a “loser.” When he loses his concentration, he stutters, is at a loss for words, and starts to sweat, which only serves to make him feel more uneasy. After the interaction, he replays the conversation over and over again, focusing on the “stupid” things he said. Similarly, he has a long-standing history of being uncomfortable with authority figures and has had a hard time raising his hand in class and approaching teachers. Since starting college, he has been isolating more, turning down invitations from his roommate to go eat or hang out, ignoring his cell phone when it rings, and habitually skipping class. His concerns about how others view him are what drives him to engage in these avoidance behaviors. After conducting your assessment, you give the patient feedback that you believe he has a social anxiety disorder, which should be the primary treatment target. You explain that you see his fear of negative evaluation, and his thoughts and behaviors surrounding social situations, as driving his increasing sense of hopelessness, isolation, and worthlessness.
Society of Clinical Psychology. (n.d.). Mike – Social anxiety [Case study]. Division 12: Clinical Psychology. https://div12.org/case_study/mike-social-anxiety/ (Archived at http://web.archive.org/web/20240812172313/https://div12.org/case_study/mike-social-anxiety/)
What to do to Complete this Assignment:
This assignment should be at least 1000 words. You must use the resources listed below to address all the following questions in essay format.Case Study listed above.
You MUST include properly formatted in-text citations throughout the paper and end-of-paper references/bibliography to connect to the required resources used for support. As a reminder, this is a graded part of the paper. Failure to include these elements in your paper will result in a loss of points.For more information on how to properly format in-text and end-of-paper references/bibliography, please refer to the Citations section found in the course resources tab.
Writing Assignment:
Introduction: Look over the list of therapy types (again, Chapter 16 starting on page 9) and choose one therapy that you might think would be the best match for him and ones that you would avoid recommending for Mike.
Paragraph 2: Justify your responses, such as, if you would not want to match him to psychodynamic and then say why not, what aspects of him might not work well with that psychotherapy approach? If biomedical seems to be a good fit to you, explain your answer why so.
Paragraph 3: Look over this list of alternatives to traditional psychotherapy and choose two to learn more about that you think would benefit Mike. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/types-of-therapy. Write a paragraph on why you might recommend these other kinds of alternative psychotherapies for Mike. What do you know about him in the paragraph above that would help you? Remember, there are no right or wrong answers here, but you will need to flesh out your ideas so that your instructor can see your thinking and thought processes. For example, if you choose Art Therapy and Biofeedback Therapy then you would do some research on these two types of therapy, be sure to use scholarly and academic sources and to ask the eCore embedded librarian if you are not sure. You can include, among other topics, who invented the technique, how long it has been used, what kinds of patients benefit most from the technique, pros and cons of the technique. Do this for both kinds of alternative therapy you choose.
Conclusion: Summarize what you learned. Which type of treatment was your favorite to learn about?.