Behavior Therapy Empowers Persons with Severe Mental Illness

Abstract

Behavior therapy has been viewed by some as disempowering persons with severe mental illness (i.e., undermining their ability to make independent decisions). This is ironic because various behavioral strategies actually promote independent decision making. Behavioral interventions (a) provide a safe place for persons to consider their life decisions; (b) simplify the range of choices that comprise many of these decisions; (c) help persons with severe mental illness learn behaviors so that they can better meet the demands of independent decision making; (d) teach family members skills so that they can provide more resources to support independent decision making; and (e) facilitate self-control over behaviors and the settings in which they occur. Behavior therapists need to assert the important role that behavioral principles assume in empowering persons with mental illness so that these principles are not discarded by professionals who misunderstand, or otherwise stereotype, behavioral interventions.