What is intensive psychotherapy?

Varies: Intensive psychotherapy can refer to many types of psychotherapy, but has the common factor of very frequent visits. This can be twice a week or even more frequent. This occurs to assist a severe, worsening, or acute condition.

Psychotherapy: This term usually refers to once or twice a week psychotherapy that focuses on uncovering causes of distress and developing better ways of coping and of viewing oneself accurately. Best.

Intensive outpatient: Intensive outpatient therapy can be several hours per day, several days per week. It is generally used if the person's problems are severe and acute.

No standard meaning: "intensive" has no standard, agreed-upon meaning. Once upon a time, most patients attended psychotherapy several times per week. Then insurance companies whittled it down to 1x/week. Now they balk at paying even for that, and try to push patients toward the cheapest and briefest treatments possible. "intensive" has come to mean anything insurance companies don't want to pay for.

Intensive therapy: Intensive psychotherapy is meeting with a psychologist several times a week due to a chronic problem that requires attention more often. One example would be ptsd when the symptoms are very difficult to cope with. Typically, patients meet with a psychologist on a weekly basis or less often, but when problems are very severe meeting more often can be very beneficial.

Severity of symptoms: Typically those with the more severe or otherwise life threatening pathology receive more intensive psychotherapy. An exception to this is analysis that is undergone by those in analytic training, where sessions can be three or more times a week, and this can last for years as part of developing as a psychoanalyst.