Behavior Therapy Treatment: Steps, Stages & Goals of Behavioral Therapy

Question: What are the next steps in behavior therapy treatment? What are daunting tasks?

Behavior Therapy Stages, Goals

Next the patient is asked to set some behavioral goals of behavior therapy. To achieve guaranteed early success the goals should be realistic. In addition the patient will work on changing some specific behavior related to depression, and try to improve some social skills.

The patient is allotted homework assignments to make these achievements easy. Between sessions the most important work is actually done, when the depressed individual implements the program. The therapist may set some behavior experiments that include tasks which may make the patient feel nervous and less confident.

Patients undergo these tasks to observe their initial reactions like “I won’t enjoy that” or “I can’t do that” are valid or not.

Behavior Therapy Steps

Usually and typically daunting tasks are social interactions like starting a conversation with a relative stranger. Many depressed individuals are hesitant or refuse to undertake this. The individual being treated for depression is encouraged to do things that normally most people enjoy. One therapist developed a course called “coping with depression”. The course employs everyday enjoyable activities such as reading a book or taking a walk. Individual’s who join the course, score for each item they enjoy.

This even helps them to identify activities which can lift their spirits and improve their mood when they are slightly depressed.