TECHNIQUE OF COMPUTER THERAPY

There are several different techniques of Computer Therapy in psychiatry based on different patient problems and different conceptualizations of etiology and therapy. The hall mark of most computer therapies has been a direct interaction between the patient and the computer. It is this immediacy and anthropomorphization of a machine that some find so threatening, regardless of any associated benefits.

Reactions of most psychiatric patients to computer interviews that collect past history and present symptom descriptions are strongly positive, and some patients in a variety of settings have found the interview experience itself helpful and,in their own words, “therapeutic.”

The biofeedback field has blossomed with the availability of small computers that can convert the patient’s physiologic functions into electronic signals that then guide the patient in modifying those very functions. Though this field has pulled back from its overly optimistic and simplistic beginnings to a more reasoned and focused position, the on-line computer will clearly play an important role in defining the ultimate applications of biofeedback to medical problems.