Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Case Study Essay

Case studies have helped psychologists obtain a patients background and medical history which contribute to leading the patient down the right path to recover. Understanding a patient’s background helps psychologists uncover ideologies that lead to the diagnosis of the patient’s condition. Once you are able to diagnose you can then speculate what treatment approach is best for the patient. In the case study I created Ashley shows early childhood trauma which starts her distorted image of herself and coping mechanisms that display a lifestyle that is not functional. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) would be the most effective treatment for her condition because it focuses on personal coping strategies that target solving current problems and
Ashley is a twenty-four year old women who works at Stop & Shop in the bakery department, this is one of several jobs she was able to sustain. Since she was around the age of seven her mother who recently passed away has always warned her not to gain too much weight or she will be disappointed and possibly disown her. Her mother’s advice developed from her own perception of why Ashley’s father divorced her. This separation occurred at the age of seven. Since then she has been conscious of the type of food she ate as well her current body weight and image even though she was at a healthy weight. Since then her anxiety worsened as a result of losing her mother to cancer and put her in a state of complete fear of gaining weight. Performing nightly rituals consisting of checking her body for visible weight gain, excessive exercise, restrictive eating, and viewing “thinspiraton” online of models who are underweight to trigger herself. Her medical history shows history of diagnosed anxiety at the age of sixteen with a prescription of Ativan that was never refilled following a series of hospitalization due to syncopal episodes from dehydration and malnutrian between in her late
Ashley’s parents separated when she was seven years old and since then her mother became a major stressor in her life. She felt the pressure to lose weight due to her mother projecting her internal conflict dealing with the divorce onto her daughter. This later on caused Ashley to experience anxiety then develop coping mechanisms such as checking herself in the mirror and restricting her intake of food. Then her mother passing away pushed Ashley to the edge into a category of anorexia nervosa as well body dysmorphia disorder. The best treatment for her would be cognitive behavioral therapy which is where the psychologist goal is to assist the client in finding and practicing effective strategies to approach and identity goals to lower or decrease symptoms of this disorder. Ashley would benefit most from this theoretical orientation because it incorporates the patient to have a thought record and to participate in desensitization. A thought record will help a patient who suffers from body dysmorphia disorder because it will show a visual of what their actually thinking instead of passively thinking. Ashley in this case would see that she has a repetitive thought process about her body weight and how she checks in the mirror and could possibly break the habit of negative thinking by breaking the cycle. Desensitization is