When it comes to mental health, the first thing that comes to mind for mental health treatment is the image of a therapist, asking them about their personal life while the patient lays on a sofa. For therapy, there is more than one form of treatment and different dynamics for identifying and coping with a person’s mental health.
First, there is psychodynamic therapy. It follows the standard role of weekly visits to a therapist’s office, following simple conversations about the patient’s personal experience in their life. It mainly helps with understanding current mental health problems and mapping out solutions from their perspective. Humanistic therapy is meant to fulfill the patient’s sense of self-fulfillment, following a path of growth and taking responsibility to their own emotions. Behavioral therapy allows the patient to understand that their reaction towards a certain problem is overexaggerated, like stressing over a test if the logical solution is to study beforehand.
Finally, cognitive therapy is similar to behavioral therapy, but it also follows a person’s generalized thoughts on events and memories. When related to depression, people overgeneralize certain responses as criticism, insults, or pity; letting the therapy work past the ideology that a negative event needs to result in negative thinking of their self or others.
In my opinion, depending on the mental health problem, I believe that cognitive therapy is more probable because it helps to work past a person’s tendency to over-rationalize any situation or response to something that works with or against their general understanding. No matter the case, therapy is one of many ways to solve problems with a person’s mental health, and the general idea of someone else helping them through their own problems and thoughts is an important step to recovery.