11/19/2020 Grand Rounds

Mark Schechter, MD
Chair, Department of Psychiatry, North Shore Medical Center
Part-Time Instructor in Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
Adjunct Instructor in Psychiatry, Tufts Medical School

Most psychotherapy that is practiced in the community is time limited, often between 5 and 20 sessions.  Time limited psychotherapy can be very effective in alleviating suffering and treating a wide range of psychiatric conditions.  One common feature that short-term psychotherapy is a conceptual focus and an ongoing awareness of the time limitation of the treatment, both of which can sometimes help to facilitate more rapid progress. Ideally, practitioners of time-limited psychotherapy are grounded in a conceptual understanding of how to provide psychologically sophisticated short-term intervention while taking a long-term review of psychological development, growth, and relapse prevention.  In this talk we will discuss 2 types of time limited psychotherapy: Brief dynamic psychotherapy and interpersonal psychotherapy, and will explore similarities and differences between these 2 treatments.  We will end with a discussion of time limited versus longer term psychotherapy, and how helpful it is to have a strong conceptual understanding of both in clinical practice.

Learning Objectives:

1. Define the objectives of short-term psychotherapy

2. Describe methods used brief dynamic psychotherapy

3. Describe methods used interpersonal psychotherapy