Challenges for office psychotherapy practice in India

Abstract

Office-based psychotherapy practice is a challenging and vexing task for psychiatrists. Psychotherapy has not yet found a firm footing as an accepted form of therapy by many patients. Psychiatrists offering psychotherapy as a treatment face many challenges that may be social, psychological, and ethical. The present review paper posits an overview of the various challenges that besiege office-based psychotherapy in private psychiatric practice. Issues right from the initiation and basic premise of describing psychotherapy and issues concerning its mechanism of action and efficacy along with individualization of therapy are discussed. The challenges of online psychotherapy and dealing with clients that refuse medical help along with the perils of eclectic psychotherapy are highlighted. Handling adolescents which poses many challenges is also discussed along with an emphasis on the sound termination of psychotherapy. The paper aims to sensitize the readers to the various challenges that office-based psychotherapy poses while providing an overview on the subject. Each of the challenges in this paper is subtopics in themselves and may warrant separate review papers in their own right.

Keywords

• Adolescents
• eclectic
• office based
• psychiatry
• psychotherapy
• termination