Effectiveness Of Gestalt Therapy Health Essay

Greenberg ( 1983 ) conducted a survey to uncover the effectivity of gestalt therapy on struggle declaration in chronic schizophrenic disorder clients. The topics recruited for research survey was 20 eight in age group of 12-51 were assessed with a battery of trials that included the Experiencing Scale and Structural Analysis of Social Behavior Scale. Interventions was implemented based on three stage struggle declaration theoretical account in which the client changed from non deciding stage to integrating stage after 4 hebdomads of therapy session indicates its efficaciousness.
Leary and Page ( 1990 ) conducted a comparative survey with concurrent controls in Masterss and doctorate guidance pupils with the age group of 25 to 35 to measure semantic differential constructs such as choler, fright, love, guilt and self credence. Experimental group of 7 samples provided individual centered gestalt group therapy for 6 hebdomad where as 7 samples in control group received no intercessions. Effectiveness Of Gestalt Therapy Health Essay. The consequence revealed that pupils having individual centered gestalt group work increased their tonss for future and love significantly more than the no therapy group.
Lobb ( 1992 ) conducted a comparative survey with concurrent controls in pregnant adult females bespeaking child birth preparation with age group of 16-35 old ages. Experimental group of 100 samples received gestalt therapy preparation where as 100 samples in control group received respiratory autogenous preparation and the remainder of them were untrained. The consequence revealed that adult females who were trained in Gestalt therapy experienced a more incorporate positive birth and shorter labors compared to adult females trained in respiratory methods or non at all.
Serok and Levi ( 1993 ) conducted a comparative survey with coincident controls among male inmates to find the effectivity of Gestalt therapy and it was administrated for 15 hebdomads. The sample size of the survey was 18. The consequences revealed that Gestalt therapy resulted in higher internal venue of control than the group take parting in free activities such as athleticss, avocations, etc.

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Bertz ( 1994 ) conducted a meta analytical appraisal to research the effectivity of Gestalt therapy. He included 38 surveies conducted between 1970 and 1986. The consequences indicated Gestalt therapy was said to be an effectual psychotherapeutic intervention which is non inferior to other comparable methods of intervention. No unequivocal statement can be made refering differential indicant, single therapy scene or long-run steps.
Clance et.al ( 1994 ) conducted a comparative survey with coincident controls among undergraduate university pupils to find the effectivity of Gestalt therapy on organic structure image. The sample size was 30. 15 sample included in experimental group and 15 sample were included in control group. The consequences revealed that Gestalt therapy resulted in important positive alterations in organic structure image compared to a control group. Effectiveness Of Gestalt Therapy Health Essay.
Paivio and Greenberg ( 1995 ) conducted a survey in people with unsolved emotional issues along with important others to find the effectivity of Gestalt therapy over Psycho educational Group ( attending placebo minimum intervention status ) to 17 samples as control group. The intercession provided was empty chair technique of gestalt therapy for the continuance of 1 twelvemonth to 17 samples of experimental group. A pseudo-randomised survey reported that the empty chair duologue group achieved significantly greater betterment than the psycho educational group on all result steps.
Cook ( 2000 ) conducted a survey in self-reported down female high school pupils to find the effectivity of Gestalt therapy over the other curative attacks. The survey design taken was randomized control test. The tool administered was Adolescent Depression stock list and anxiousness graduated tables. Short term gestalt therapy group intercession was given for continuance of 5 hebdomads. The consequences shown that after the gestalt intervention the gestalt group had lower tonss for depression, anxiousness and higher tonss for self-concept than the control group.
Rosner et Al ( 2000 ) conducted a survey among high school misss with depression as one group and other group was patients with major depression upset to find the effectivity of Gestalt therapy over the other curative attacks. The survey design was randomized control test. Sample size of the survey was 38. Intervention provided was focussed expressive group psychotherapeutics ( amanualised signifier of Gestalt therapy ) was administered for 21 sample where as 17 sample acted as control group having cognitive therapy for 20 hebdomads. The consequences revealed that there were significantly lower tonss on the Reynolds Adolescent Depression Inventory ( RADS ) and on the Revised Children Manifest Anxiety Scale ( RCMAS ) among high school misss following Gestalt therapy compared to the control group. There were significantly higher tonss on the Piers Harris Children ‘s Self-Concept Scale ( PHSCS ) for gestalt therapy in experimental group compared to the control group.
Vander Spuy and Willem Dirk ( 2009 ) conducted a survey to research the usage of the Schoeman theoretical account on bettering emotional balance of kid with intellectual paralysis. Researcher found that negative feedback from society leads to emotional instability among the kid with intellectual paralysis. Schoeman theoretical account was based on gestalt doctrine and done in conjuction with gestalt drama therapy. Through using the different facets of this theoretical account the survey sheds light on the utility of the Schoeman theoretical account in therapy which improved the emotional balance of kid with intellectual paralysis.
Arnold Coven ( 2010 ) conducted a survey to research the effectivity of gestalt group dream work presentations on look of intense feelings among Taiwan pupils. The degree of energy and exhilaration was high among the 40-50 group members, comprised of undergraduate, Masterss, and doctorial pupils and a few professors. The group members elicited affectional responses. Hence the dream work technique was found to be effectual on look of intense feelings.
Teresa Kelly and Linsey Howie ( 2011 ) conducted a qualitative survey to research the effectivity of gestalt therapy preparation on psychiatric nursing pattern.Effectiveness Of Gestalt Therapy Health Essay.  Four mental wellness nurses who are interested in gestalt therapy was trained and they were invited to state their narratives of preparation in a gestalt attack to therapy and tell their experiences of how it influenced their pattern. With the narrative analysis methods the research findings was presented as aggregation of four narratives. Eight subjects were identified from those narratives and the consequences encapsulates the effectivity of gestalt therapy preparation into nursing pattern.
Louw and Christina Johanna ( 2011 ) conducted a survey to concentrate on usage of bridging technique in gestalt therapy to get the better of a contact doing barriers in striplings. The quantitative and qualitative research attacks were combined were followed and a individual system experimental design was applied. Adolescent participants in this survey was 14 between the ages of 11 and 14 old ages were purposefully selected from three different schools in South Africa with their parents and instructors. Before intercession appraisal, after intercession appraisal and follow up appraisal were done utilizing the research worker formulated questionnaire. Qualitative informations were collected through semi-structured interviews with parents and instructors and through curative intercessions with striplings. Research happening indicates that the bridging technique of gestalt therapy was effectual to get the better of the contact doing barrier in striplings.
Berdondini, Elliott and Shearer ( 2012 ) conducted a quasi experimental survey to uncover the effectivity of experiential psychotherapeutics concentrating on gestalt and emotion focused therapy on societal anxiousness. Personal questionnaire, societal phobic disorder stock list, Strathclyde Inventory, Inventory of Interpersonal Problems was used as tool in this research survey. Participants were indiscriminately assigned into 20 single Sessionss. The development of coaction of gestalt therapy and emotion focused therapy be polar for curative success after 17 Sessionss was important at 0.05 degree. Hence, the therapy decreases the societal anxiousness among patients.

Effectiveness of Gestalt therapy on self awareness among patients with schizophrenia was examined through Quasi experimental pretest posttest with control group design. Purposive samples of 16 patients with schizophrenia who had low self awareness were randomly assigned into experimental and control group for the study. Gestalt therapy was intervened to the patients with Schizophrenia. Situational self awareness scale was used to assess the level of self awareness before and after gestalt therapy. The data gathered were statistically analyzed to test the hypotheses. The result revealed that there was a significant difference in the level of self awareness before and after gestalt therapy. Hence, the study concluded that gestalt therapy is found to be an effective therapy in improving the level of self awareness among the patients with Schizophrenia.
Effectiveness of gestalt therapy on self awareness among patients with SCHIZOPHRENIA AT selected hospital, coimbatore
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness. The onset of symptoms typically occurs in young adulthood, with a global lifetime prevalence of about 0.3-0.7%. Schizophrenia is a severe form of mental illness affecting about 7 per thousand of the adult population, mostly in the age group 15-35 years. Though the incidence is low (3 per 10,000) the prevalence is high due to chronicity (W.H.O., 2008).

Schizophrenia is altering one’s sense of self, denote the awareness of one’s physical body and mental state. It encompasses one’s personality, perceptions and emotions. It also reflects one’s conscious decisions and actions. A sense of self is to combine one’s inside awareness with one’s outside awareness. Inside everyone’s nervous system lies the I-Function. This is the experience of I or the self in the brain. The I-Function includes more or less of the nervous system depending on how much is connected and functioning properly. It is having a sense of the self-experiencing. Effectiveness Of Gestalt Therapy Health Essay.

Self Awareness is having a clear perception of personality including strengths, weaknesses, thoughts, beliefs, motivation, and emotions. Self Awareness allows to understand other people, how they perceive us, our attitude and our responses to them in the moment. Self awareness is one of the attributes of emotional intelligence and an important factor in achieving success. An improvement in self awareness is able to make changes in the thoughts and interpretations in mind. Changing the interpretations in mind will allows to change emotions.

The Nurse-client relationship and team work between the nurse-patient will help the patient to increase self awareness, maturity and knowledge during the process (Hildegard Peplau, 1952). The nurse must demonstrate active listening skills, apply therapeutic communication techniques, provide guidance and support in the process of self-discovery, maintain professional boundaries and self-awareness to successfully implement the counseling role (Gastmans, 1998).

Disturbance in sense of self observed in psychotic disorders act as a secondary marker of basic disturbance more than the poor social functioning (Nelson et al., 2009). Fuchs and Schlimme (2009) proposed that in schizophrenia the weakening of the basic sense of self, the disruption of implicit bodily functioning and the disconnection from intercorporeality with others are manifestations of a fundamental disturbance of the bodily self or a disembodiment.

Demetriou’s theory, one of the Neo-Piagetian theories of cognitive development states that, Self-awareness develops systematically from birth through the life span and it is a major factor for the development of general inferential processes. Moreover, a series of recent studies showed that self-awareness on cognitive processes participates in general intelligence with processing efficiency functions such as working memory, processing speed and reasoning.

A holistic nursing model of self-awareness consists of four interconnected components: psychological, physical, environmental and philosophical. The psychological component includes knowledge of emotions, motivations, self-concept, and personality. Being psychologically self-aware means being sensitive to feelings and outside events that affect those feelings. The physical component is the knowledge of personal and general physiology as well as of body sensations, body image and physical potential. The environmental component consists of the socio cultural environment, relationship with others, and knowledge of the relationship between humans and nature. The philosophical component is the sense of life having meaning. A personal philosophy of life and death may or may not include a spiritual being, but it does take into account responsibility to the world and the ethics of behavior. Together these components provide a model that can be used to promote the self-awareness, self-growth of nurses and t he patients for whom they care (Campbell, 1980).

Gestalt therapy is a phenomenological-existential therapy founded by Frederick and Laura Perls in the 1940s. It teaches the phenomenological method of awareness, in which perceiving, feeling, and acting are distinguished from interpreting and reshuffling pre-existing attitudes. Explanations and interpretations are considered less reliable than what is directly perceived and felt (Gary Yontef, 1993).

Gestalt therapy helps clients develop their own support for desired contact or withdrawal and improve the self awareness (L. Perls, 1978). Gestalt therapy works for understanding by using the active, healing presence of the therapist and the patient in a relationship based on true contact. Transference, explored and worked through as it arises, is not encouraged by the Gestalt therapist (Polster, 1968).

In Gestalt therapy, the patient quickly learns to make the discrimination between ideas and ideation, between well-worn obsession pathways and new thoughts, between a statement of experience and a statement of a statement. The Gestalt goal of pursuing experience and insight which emerges as the Gestalt emerges is more potent than insight given by the therapist, does help the patient and the therapist draw and maintain these important distinctions. (Applebaum, 1976)Effectiveness Of Gestalt Therapy Health Essay.

The techniques adopted from Gestalt therapy which improves the self awareness are empty chair technique, guided fantasy, making rounds and rehearsal exercise. In empty chair technique, when the client is in hot seat and enact a role of other person it will help the client to be aware of the others. The use of the two-chair technique is to resolve splits. A split as a verbal performance pattern in which a client reports a division of the self process into two partial aspects of the self or tendencies. Two-chair operations conducted have been found to facilitate an increase in the depth of experiencing and index of productive psychotherapy and to lead to resolutions of splits with populations seeking counseling (Greenberg, 1999).The guided fantasy will help the client to be aware of past events. Making rounds will help the client to socialize well with others and which in turn improve the awareness of surroundings. Rehearsal exercise will help the client to change his or her maladaptive behaviour and which in turn help them to be aware the correct behaviour.

1.1. NEED FOR THE STUDY:
Schizophrenia affects about 24 million people worldwide as of 2011. 90% of people with untreated schizophrenia are in developing countries. More than 50% of persons with schizophrenia are not receiving appropriate care.

Schizophrenia affects around 0.3-0.7% of people at some point in their life. It occurs 1.4 times more frequently in males than females and typically appears earlier in men in the peak ages of onset are 20-28 years for males and 26-32 years for females. Schizophrenia occurs at similar rates worldwide, its prevalence varies across the world, within countries, and at the local and neighborhood level. It causes approximately 1% of worldwide disability adjusted life years.

It is about 10 million Indian citizens approximately 10-20 per 1000 population are affected by many serious mental disorder at any point in their life time. 20-30 million people in India need attention, with the above statistics one can expect approximately 2 million people suffering from Schizophrenia at any given time (WHO, 2008). It is expected that 45 million people will be affected with Schizophrenia in the next decade, as the care for chronic mentally ill had shifted from mental hospitals to community (Kulhura, 2007). Nearly 7 lakh people are affected with Schizophrenia in Tamil Nadu (Nambi, 2009).

Human personality is compared to a floating ball at any given moment, only a portion is exposed while the rest is submerged. Unawareness is the result of the organism’s not being in touch with its external environment due to its being mostly submerged in its own internal environment or fantasies or not being in touch with its inner life due to fixation on the external (Simkin, 1976). Similarly, awareness of self is lacking in client with Schizophrenia and it will be improved with the help of Gestalt therapy. Awareness and dialogue are the two primary therapeutic tools in Gestalt therapy. Effectiveness Of Gestalt Therapy Health Essay. Awareness is a form of experience that may be loosely defined as being in touch with one’s own existence that what actually present.

A patient with low levels of self-awareness is likely to be unmotivated and set unrealistic goals, display poor judgment and fail to see the need for compensatory strategies, let alone apply them in everyday life. Individuals with higher levels of self-awareness are more likely to be active participant in rehabilitation, experience stronger therapeutic alliances and achieve better rehabilitation outcomes in terms of level of community integration (Fleming, 2012).

The lack of self awareness develops incapacity to understand the true situation for individual and unable to be aware of mistake that has been committed or being blamed without any mistakes done. It makes the individual to hold back from developing self-management, social awareness and relationship management skills. Lack of self awareness will cause excess stress to family member and confront the angry reaction. Client with low self awareness may involve in occupation but they are unaware that where they fail in workplace and unable to set achievable goal at work or evaluate their work performance in a realistic manner. So, it impairs one’s own vocational confidence.

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The aim of Gestalt therapy is the awareness development, the freely ongoing gestalt formation where what is of greatest concern and interest to the organism, the relationship, the group or society becomes gestalt, comes into the foreground where it can be fully experienced and coped with so that then it can melt into the background and leave the foreground free for the next relevant gestalt. (Laura Perls, 1973)

The greater sense of emotional wellbeing being was associated with awareness into need for the treatment. A study published in this area suggested that increasing the hope of persons with schizophrenia may directly and positively increase both their quality of life and the usefulness of their self awareness into their illness. (Hassonohayon et.al., 2009).

Even though the gestalt research literature on Gestalt therapy is sparse, studies that showed increased self-actualization and positive self-concept following Gestalt therapy groups (Harman, 1984).

The Greenberg studies related specific acts and change processes in therapy with particular outcomes. Their research distinguished three types of outcome (immediate, intermediate and final) and three levels of process (speech act, episode and relationship). They studied speech in the context of the type of episodes in which it appears and they studied the episodes in the context of the relationships in which they occur (Greenberg, 1986)

The use of the two-chair technique is to resolve splits. A split as a verbal performance pattern in which a client reports a division of the self process into two partial aspects of the self or tendencies. Two-chair operations conducted have been found to facilitate an increase in the depth of experiencing and index of productive psychotherapy and to lead to resolutions of splits with populations seeking counseling (Greenberg, 1999).

A study conducted on effects of two-chair dialogues and focusing on conflict resolution found that Two-chair dialogue appeared to produce a more direct experience of conflict and encouraged the client in a form of self-confrontation that helped create a resolution to the conflict (L. S. Greenberg and H. M. Higgins, 1990). Effectiveness Of Gestalt Therapy Health Essay.

A number of studies that compared the behavior of gestalt therapists with that of other therapists. Brunnink and Schroeder compared expert psychoanalysts, behavior therapists and gestalt therapists. He found the gestalt therapists provided more direct guidance, less verbal facilitation, less focus on the client, more self-disclosure, greater initiative and less emotional support. They also found that the interview content of gestalt therapists tended to reflect a more experiential or subjective approach to therapy (Harman, 1994).

Numerous literature review reported that Gestalt therapy is specifically effective in improving Self awareness. It is recognized as an effective therapy in the improvement of Self awareness. During the posting in psychiatric ward by interaction and observation, the researcher recognized the lack of Self awareness in client with chronic schizophrenia. Hence the researcher developed interest to improve the self awareness among client with chronic schizophrenia. Therefore the researcher has adopted Gestalt therapy to improve self awareness and help them to lead a happy and healthy life.

1.2. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM:
EFFECTIVENESS OF GESTALT THERAPY ON SELF AWARENESS AMONG PATIENTS WITH SCHIZOPHRENIA AT SELECTED HOSPITAL, COIMBATORE.

1.3. OBJECTIVES
To assess Self awareness among patients with Schizophrenia.

To administer Gestalt therapy among patients with Schizophrenia.

To assess Self awareness among patients with Schizophrenia after Gestalt therapy.

1.4. OPERATIONAL DEFINITONS:
1.4.1. Effectiveness:
It refers to change in the level of self awareness after the implementation of Gestalt therapy among the among patients with schizophrenia

1.4.2. Gestalt therapy:
Intervention provided to the patients with schizophrenia based on the Gestalt therapy techniques such as empty chair technique, guided fantasy, making rounds and rehearsal exercise as for one month period as weekly one session as of four in total.

1.4.3. Self Awareness:
It refers to ability of the person to aware about oneself in that particular situation and in particular environment. It was assessed by Situational Self awareness scale (Govern and Marsh, 2001).

1.4.4. Patients with Schizophrenia:
It refers to clinically diagnosed patients with schizophrenia hospitalized in Krishna nursing home who has illness more than 2 years with low self awareness belongs to the age group of 20-50 years.

Effectiveness of Gestalt therapy on self awareness among patients with schizophrenia was examined through Quasi experimental pretest posttest with control group design. Purposive samples of 16 patients with schizophrenia who had low self awareness were randomly assigned into experimental and control group for the study. Gestalt therapy was intervened to the patients with Schizophrenia. Situational self awareness scale was used to assess the level of self awareness before and after gestalt therapy. The data gathered were statistically analyzed to test the hypotheses. The result revealed that there was a significant difference in the level of self awareness before and after gestalt therapy. Hence, the study concluded that gestalt therapy is found to be an effective therapy in improving the level of self awareness among the patients with Schizophrenia. Effectiveness Of Gestalt Therapy Health Essay.

Effectiveness of gestalt therapy on self awareness among patients with SCHIZOPHRENIA AT selected hospital, coimbatore
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness. The onset of symptoms typically occurs in young adulthood, with a global lifetime prevalence of about 0.3-0.7%. Schizophrenia is a severe form of mental illness affecting about 7 per thousand of the adult population, mostly in the age group 15-35 years. Though the incidence is low (3 per 10,000) the prevalence is high due to chronicity (W.H.O., 2008).

Schizophrenia is altering one’s sense of self, denote the awareness of one’s physical body and mental state. It encompasses one’s personality, perceptions and emotions. It also reflects one’s conscious decisions and actions. A sense of self is to combine one’s inside awareness with one’s outside awareness. Inside everyone’s nervous system lies the I-Function. This is the experience of I or the self in the brain. The I-Function includes more or less of the nervous system depending on how much is connected and functioning properly. It is having a sense of the self-experiencing.

Self Awareness is having a clear perception of personality including strengths, weaknesses, thoughts, beliefs, motivation, and emotions. Self Awareness allows to understand other people, how they perceive us, our attitude and our responses to them in the moment. Self awareness is one of the attributes of emotional intelligence and an important factor in achieving success. An improvement in self awareness is able to make changes in the thoughts and interpretations in mind. Changing the interpretations in mind will allows to change emotions.

The Nurse-client relationship and team work between the nurse-patient will help the patient to increase self awareness, maturity and knowledge during the process (Hildegard Peplau, 1952). The nurse must demonstrate active listening skills, apply therapeutic communication techniques, provide guidance and support in the process of self-discovery, maintain professional boundaries and self-awareness to successfully implement the counseling role (Gastmans, 1998).

Disturbance in sense of self observed in psychotic disorders act as a secondary marker of basic disturbance more than the poor social functioning (Nelson et al., 2009). Fuchs and Schlimme (2009) proposed that in schizophrenia the weakening of the basic sense of self, the disruption of implicit bodily functioning and the disconnection from intercorporeality with others are manifestations of a fundamental disturbance of the bodily self or a disembodiment.

Demetriou’s theory, one of the Neo-Piagetian theories of cognitive development states that, Self-awareness develops systematically from birth through the life span and it is a major factor for the development of general inferential processes. Moreover, a series of recent studies showed that self-awareness on cognitive processes participates in general intelligence with processing efficiency functions such as working memory, processing speed and reasoning.

A holistic nursing model of self-awareness consists of four interconnected components: psychological, physical, environmental and philosophical. The psychological component includes knowledge of emotions, motivations, self-concept, and personality. Being psychologically self-aware means being sensitive to feelings and outside events that affect those feelings. The physical component is the knowledge of personal and general physiology as well as of body sensations, body image and physical potential. Effectiveness Of Gestalt Therapy Health Essay. The environmental component consists of the socio cultural environment, relationship with others, and knowledge of the relationship between humans and nature. The philosophical component is the sense of life having meaning. A personal philosophy of life and death may or may not include a spiritual being, but it does take into account responsibility to the world and the ethics of behavior. Together these components provide a model that can be used to promote the self-awareness, self-growth of nurses and the patients for whom they care (Campbell, 1980).

Gestalt therapy is a phenomenological-existential therapy founded by Frederick and Laura Perls in the 1940s. It teaches the phenomenological method of awareness, in which perceiving, feeling, and acting are distinguished from interpreting and reshuffling pre-existing attitudes. Explanations and interpretations are considered less reliable than what is directly perceived and felt (Gary Yontef, 1993).

Gestalt therapy helps clients develop their own support for desired contact or withdrawal and improve the self awareness (L. Perls, 1978). Gestalt therapy works for understanding by using the active, healing presence of the therapist and the patient in a relationship based on true contact. Transference, explored and worked through as it arises, is not encouraged by the Gestalt therapist (Polster, 1968).

In Gestalt therapy, the patient quickly learns to make the discrimination between ideas and ideation, between well-worn obsession pathways and new thoughts, between a statement of experience and a statement of a statement. The Gestalt goal of pursuing experience and insight which emerges as the Gestalt emerges is more potent than insight given by the therapist, does help the patient and the therapist draw and maintain these important distinctions. (Applebaum, 1976)

The techniques adopted from Gestalt therapy which improves the self awareness are empty chair technique, guided fantasy, making rounds and rehearsal exercise. In empty chair technique, when the client is in hot seat and enact a role of other person it will help the client to be aware of the others. The use of the two-chair technique is to resolve splits. Effectiveness Of Gestalt Therapy Health Essay. A split as a verbal performance pattern in which a client reports a division of the self process into two partial aspects of the self or tendencies. Two-chair operations conducted have been found to facilitate an increase in the depth of experiencing and index of productive psychotherapy and to lead to resolutions of splits with populations seeking counseling (Greenberg, 1999).The guided fantasy will help the client to be aware of past events. Making rounds will help the client to socialize well with others and which in turn improve the awareness of surroundings. Rehearsal exercise will help the client to change his or her maladaptive behaviour and which in turn help them to be aware the correct behaviour.

1.1. NEED FOR THE STUDY:
Schizophrenia affects about 24 million people worldwide as of 2011. 90% of people with untreated schizophrenia are in developing countries. More than 50% of persons with schizophrenia are not receiving appropriate care.

Schizophrenia affects around 0.3-0.7% of people at some point in their life. It occurs 1.4 times more frequently in males than females and typically appears earlier in men in the peak ages of onset are 20-28 years for males and 26-32 years for females. Schizophrenia occurs at similar rates worldwide, its prevalence varies across the world, within countries, and at the local and neighborhood level. It causes approximately 1% of worldwide disability adjusted life years.

It is about 10 million Indian citizens approximately 10-20 per 1000 population are affected by many serious mental disorder at any point in their life time. 20-30 million people in India need attention, with the above statistics one can expect approximately 2 million people suffering from Schizophrenia at any given time (WHO, 2008). It is expected that 45 million people will be affected with Schizophrenia in the next decade, as the care for chronic mentally ill had shifted from mental hospitals to community (Kulhura, 2007). Nearly 7 lakh people are affected with Schizophrenia in Tamil Nadu (Nambi, 2009). Effectiveness Of Gestalt Therapy Health Essay.

Human personality is compared to a floating ball at any given moment, only a portion is exposed while the rest is submerged. Unawareness is the result of the organism’s not being in touch with its external environment due to its being mostly submerged in its own internal environment or fantasies or not being in touch with its inner life due to fixation on the external (Simkin, 1976). Similarly, awareness of self is lacking in client with Schizophrenia and it will be improved with the help of Gestalt therapy. Awareness and dialogue are the two primary therapeutic tools in Gestalt therapy. Awareness is a form of experience that may be loosely defined as being in touch with one’s own existence that what actually present.

A patient with low levels of self-awareness is likely to be unmotivated and set unrealistic goals, display poor judgment and fail to see the need for compensatory strategies, let alone apply them in everyday life. Individuals with higher levels of self-awareness are more likely to be active participant in rehabilitation, experience stronger therapeutic alliances and achieve better rehabilitation outcomes in terms of level of community integration (Fleming, 2012).

The lack of self awareness develops incapacity to understand the true situation for individual and unable to be aware of mistake that has been committed or being blamed without any mistakes done. It makes the individual to hold back from developing self-management, social awareness and relationship management skills. Lack of self awareness will cause excess stress to family member and confront the angry reaction. Client with low self awareness may involve in occupation but they are unaware that where they fail in workplace and unable to set achievable goal at work or evaluate their work performance in a realistic manner. So, it impairs one’s own vocational confidence.

The aim of Gestalt therapy is the awareness development, the freely ongoing gestalt formation where what is of greatest concern and interest to the organism, the relationship, the group or society becomes gestalt, comes into the foreground where it can be fully experienced and coped with so that then it can melt into the background and leave the foreground free for the next relevant gestalt. (Laura Perls, 1973)

The greater sense of emotional wellbeing being was associated with awareness into need for the treatment.Effectiveness Of Gestalt Therapy Health Essay.  A study published in this area suggested that increasing the hope of persons with schizophrenia may directly and positively increase both their quality of life and the usefulness of their self awareness into their illness. (Hassonohayon et.al., 2009).

Even though the gestalt research literature on Gestalt therapy is sparse, studies that showed increased self-actualization and positive self-concept following Gestalt therapy groups (Harman, 1984).

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The Greenberg studies related specific acts and change processes in therapy with particular outcomes. Their research distinguished three types of outcome (immediate, intermediate and final) and three levels of process (speech act, episode and relationship). They studied speech in the context of the type of episodes in which it appears and they studied the episodes in the context of the relationships in which they occur (Greenberg, 1986)

The use of the two-chair technique is to resolve splits. A split as a verbal performance pattern in which a client reports a division of the self process into two partial aspects of the self or tendencies. Two-chair operations conducted have been found to facilitate an increase in the depth of experiencing and index of productive psychotherapy and to lead to resolutions of splits with populations seeking counseling (Greenberg, 1999).

A study conducted on effects of two-chair dialogues and focusing on conflict resolution found that Two-chair dialogue appeared to produce a more direct experience of conflict and encouraged the client in a form of self-confrontation that helped create a resolution to the conflict (L. S. Greenberg and H. M. Higgins, 1990).

A number of studies that compared the behavior of gestalt therapists with that of other therapists. Brunnink and Schroeder compared expert psychoanalysts, behavior therapists and gestalt therapists. He found the gestalt therapists provided more direct guidance, less verbal facilitation, less focus on the client, more self-disclosure, greater initiative and less emotional support. They also found that the interview content of gestalt therapists tended to reflect a more experiential or subjective approach to therapy (Harman, 1994). Effectiveness Of Gestalt Therapy Health Essay.

Numerous literature review reported that Gestalt therapy is specifically effective in improving Self awareness. It is recognized as an effective therapy in the improvement of Self awareness. During the posting in psychiatric ward by interaction and observation, the researcher recognized the lack of Self awareness in client with chronic schizophrenia. Hence the researcher developed interest to improve the self awareness among client with chronic schizophrenia. Therefore the researcher has adopted Gestalt therapy to improve self awareness and help them to lead a happy and healthy life. Effectiveness Of Gestalt Therapy Health Essay.