Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a psycho-social intervention that aims to reduce symptoms of various mental health conditions, primarily depression and anxiety disorders. CBT focuses on challenging and changing cognitive distortions and behaviors, improving emotional regulation, and the development of personal coping strategies that target solving current problems. Though it was originally designed to treat depression, its uses have been expanded to include the treatment of a number of mental health conditions, including anxiety, alcohol and drug use problems, marital problems, and eating disorders. CBT includes a number of cognitive or behavior psychotherapies that treat defined psychopathologies using evidence-based techniques and strategies.
Cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) is a form of economic analysis that compares the relative costs and outcomes (effects) of different courses of action. Cost-effectiveness analysis is distinct from cost–benefit analysis, which assigns a monetary value to the measure of effect. Cost-effectiveness analysis is often used in the field of health services, where it may be inappropriate to monetize health effect. Typically the CEA is expressed in terms of a ratio where the denominator is a gain in health from a measure and the numerator is the cost associated with the health gain. The most commonly used outcome measure is quality-adjusted life years (QALY).
Therapeutic touch, known by some as "non-contact therapeutic touch" (NCTT), is a pseudoscientific energy therapy which practitioners claim promotes healing and reduces pain and anxiety. "Therapeutic Touch" is a registered trademark in Canada for the "[s]tructured and standardized healing practice performed by practitioners trained to be sensitive to the receiver's energy field that surrounds the body;...no touching is required."
Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is a mental and behavioral disorder, specifically an anxiety disorder characterized by excessive, uncontrollable and often irrational worry about events or activities. Worry often interferes with daily functioning, and sufferers are often overly concerned about everyday matters such as health, finances, death, family, relationship concerns, or work difficulties. Symptoms may include excessive worry, restlessness, trouble sleeping, exhaustion, irritability, sweating, and trembling.
The Dodo bird verdict is a controversial topic in psychotherapy, referring to the claim that all empirically validated psychotherapies, regardless of their specific components, produce equivalent outcomes. It is named after the Dodo character in Alice in Wonderland. The conjecture was introduced by Saul Rosenzweig in 1936, drawing on imagery from Lewis Carroll's novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, but only came into prominence with the emergence of new research evidence in the 1970s.
Moclobemide is a reversible inhibitor of monoamine oxidase A (RIMA) drug primarily used to treat depression and social anxiety. It is not approved for use in the United States, but is approved in other Western countries such as Canada, the UK and Australia. It is produced by affiliates of the Hoffmann–La Roche pharmaceutical company. Initially, Aurorix was also marketed by Roche in South Africa, but was withdrawn after its patent rights expired and Cipla Medpro's Depnil and Pharma Dynamic's Clorix became available at half the cost.
Adventure therapy is a form of psychotherapy created as early as the 1960s. It is influenced by a variety of learning and psychological theories. Experiential education is the underlying philosophy.
Pharmacoeconomics refers to the scientific discipline that compares the value of one pharmaceutical drug or drug therapy to another. It is a sub-discipline of health economics. A pharmacoeconomic study evaluates the cost and effects of a pharmaceutical product. Pharmacoeconomic studies serve to guide optimal healthcare resource allocation, in a standardized and scientifically grounded manner.
The HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN) is a worldwide collaborative clinical trials network that brings together investigators, ethicists, community and other partners to develop and test the safety and efficacy of interventions designed to prevent the acquisition and transmission of HIV. HPTN studies evaluate new HIV prevention interventions and strategies in populations and geographical regions that bear a disproportionate burden of infection. The HPTN is committed to the highest ethical standards for its clinical trials and recognizes the importance of community engagement in all phases of the research process.
A residential treatment center (RTC), sometimes called a rehab, is a live-in health care facility providing therapy for substance use disorders, mental illness, or other behavioral problems. Residential treatment may be considered the "last-ditch" approach to treating abnormal psychology or psychopathology.
Esketamine, sold under the brand names Spravato and Ketanest among others, is a dissociative hallucinogen medication used as a general anesthetic and as an antidepressant for treatment of depression. It is specifically used as a therapy for treatment-resistant depression (TRD) and for major depressive disorder (MDD) with co-occurring suicidal ideation or behavior. Its effectiveness for depression is modest and similar to that of other antidepressants. Esketamine is used by infusion into a vein for anesthesia and under direct medical supervision as a nasal spray once or twice weekly for depression.
Alternative veterinary medicine is the use of alternative medicine in the treatment of animals. Types alternative therapies used for veterinary treatments may include, but are not limited to, acupuncture, herbal medicine, homeopathy, ethnomedicine and chiropractic. The term includes many treatments that don't have enough evidence to support them being a standard method within many veterinary practices.
Depression is a symptom of some physical diseases; a side effect of some drugs and medical treatments; and a symptom of some mood disorders such as major depressive disorder or dysthymia. Physical causes are ruled out with a clinical assessment of depression that measures vitamins, minerals, electrolytes, and hormones. Management of depression may involve a number of different therapies: medications, behavior therapy, psychotherapy, and medical devices.
Placebo-controlled studies are a way of testing a medical therapy in which, in addition to a group of subjects that receives the treatment to be evaluated, a separate control group receives a sham "placebo" treatment which is specifically designed to have no real effect. Placebos are most commonly used in blinded trials, where subjects do not know whether they are receiving real or placebo treatment. Often, there is also a further "natural history" group that does not receive any treatment at all.
Chronotherapy, also called chronotherapeutics or chronotherapeutic drug delivery, refers to the use of circadian or other rhythmic cycles of a condition's symptoms and/or of the individual being treated in the application of therapy. Examples of this are treatments of psychiatric and somatic diseases that are administered according to a schedule that corresponds to these rhythms in order to maximize effectiveness and minimize side effects of the therapy.
The phases of clinical research are the stages in which scientists conduct experiments with a health intervention to obtain sufficient evidence for a process considered effective as a medical treatment. For drug development, the clinical phases start with testing for safety in a few human subjects, then expand to many study participants to determine if the treatment is effective. Clinical research is conducted on drug candidates, vaccine candidates, new medical devices, and new diagnostic assays.
Brexpiprazole, sold under the brand name Rexulti among others, is an atypical antipsychotic. It is a dopamine D2 receptor partial agonist and has been described as a "serotonin–dopamine activity modulator" (SDAM). The drug was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on July 10, 2015, for the treatment of schizophrenia, and as an adjunctive treatment for depression. It has been designed to provide improved efficacy and tolerability (e.g., less akathisia, restlessness and/or insomnia) over established adjunctive treatments for major depressive disorder (MDD).
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is derived from both the cognitive and behavioral schools of psychology and focuses on the alteration of thoughts and actions with the goal of treating various disorders. The cognitive behavioral treatment of eating disorders emphasizes on the minimization of negative thoughts about body image and the act of eating, and attempts to alter negative and harmful behaviors that are involved in and perpetuate eating disorders. It also encourages the ability to tolerate negative thoughts and feelings as well as the ability to think about food and body perception in a multi-dimensional way. The emphasis is not only placed on altering cognition, but also on tangible practices like making goals and being rewarded for meeting those goals. CBT is a “time-limited and focused approach” which means that it is important for the patients of this type of therapy to have particular issues that they want to address when they begin treatment. CBT has also proven to be one of the most effective treatments for eating disorders.
Anti–vascular endothelial growth factor therapy, also known as anti-VEGF therapy or anti-VEGF medication, is the use of medications that block vascular endothelial growth factor. This is done in the treatment of certain cancers and in age-related macular degeneration. They can involve monoclonal antibodies such as bevacizumab, antibody derivatives such as ranibizumab (Lucentis), or orally-available small molecules that inhibit the tyrosine kinases stimulated by VEGF: sunitinib, sorafenib, axitinib, and pazopanib.
A pragmatic clinical trial (PCT), sometimes called a practical clinical trial (PCT), is a clinical trial that focuses on correlation between treatments and outcomes in real-world health system practice rather than focusing on proving causative explanations for outcomes, which requires extensive deconfounding with inclusion and exclusion criteria so strict that they risk rendering the trial results irrelevant to much of real-world practice.
