[Psychotherapeutic interventions in stereotypies]

Stereotypies belong to the psychomotor disorders and they are found in many different disorders. This article refers to the international literature about the psychotherapeutic interventions in stereotypies and reviews the psychotherapeutic techniques that are already being used for these disorders. This study refers to four kinds of psychotherapeutic treatment: (a) Behavioral therapy, (b) Milieu therapy which can be combined successfully with an occupational therapy, (c) Family therapy and (d) Supportive or cognitive or dynamic psychotherapy. The method used for finding the articles for this review was the web research. The articles found were 44 in total, but only 25 were studied extensively since they were absolutely relative to the subject of this review. 12 of these articles were case studies, 7 theoretical papers and 5 of them were reviews. The last one was a research epidemiological study. According to most of the articles, behavioral therapy is considered to be the most effective psychotherapeutic treatment for attenuating stereotypies and relies on techniques like systematic desensitization, environmental enrichment, positive reinforcement of alternative behaviors and negative reinforcement of the "problematic" behaviors. The milieu therapy, combined with occupational therapy, endeavours to shape an appropriate environment where the patient can recover. Family therapy focuses on fully informing the relatives about the nature of stereotypies. Supportive psychotherapy focuses on the current problems in the patient's life. The cognitive psychotherapy tries to fix the dysfunctional thoughts of the patients. Finally, the dynamic psychotherapy is focused on the restoration or reinforcement of the patient's defensive mechanisms. It should be noted that there is a lack of systematic research in the field of stereotypies in general and, especially, regarding psychotherapeutic interventions.