Mental health has a significant impact on people’s work, life and even the stability and harmony of the whole society. 2014 and 2015, for two consecutive years, the publicity theme of World Mental Health Day in China was “Mental Health, Social Harmony”, which shows that its importance to social harmony has attracted wide attention from the whole society. At present, China is in a period of rapid economic development, the society is becoming more and more diversified, and the complex social ecology makes the contemporary people suffer from more severe psychological and mental pressure, and this rapid social change affects the mental health of the nation, and the prevalence of mental illness is increasing. A set of figures Professor Fei Lipeng published a paper on the prevalence of mental illness in China in the journal The Willow Moon Knife in 2009. The study showed that the total prevalence of various mental disorders in China was 17.5%, of which the first ranked was mood disorders (6.1%), the second was anxiety disorders (5.6%), and the third was various substance dependence, including alcohol dependence and drug addiction (5.9%), while the prevalence of schizophrenia was around 1%. The 2010 Global Burden of Disease Study showed that of the disability-adjusted life years (all healthy life years lost from onset to death) due to mental illness, the top three were depression (40.5%), anxiety (14.6%), and mental disorders due to drug addiction (10.9%). in 2010, mental illness caused 232,000 deaths worldwide, making it the fifth leading cause of death and Mental illness is the fifth leading cause of death and disease and the leading cause of non-fatal disease, with mental illness causing more deaths and illnesses globally than even AIDS, tuberculosis, diabetes and traffic injuries. By 2020, mental illness is expected to account for 15.5% of DALYs, and with suicide (self-inflicted), 20.2% of DALYs. As of today, mental disorders account for 5 of the 25 high-burden diseases and health problems that exceed 1% of DALYs, namely depression, suicide (self-injury), schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder, and by 2020, dementia is expected to be added. Another related survey shows that there are currently more than 30 million young people in China with varying degrees of psychological problems, including 21.6%-32% of primary and secondary school students with psychological disorders, and 16%-25.4% of college students with psychological disorders. As the prevalence of mental illness increases, the co-morbidity of chronic physical illnesses with mental disorders is becoming increasingly common, posing a serious challenge to the existing health care system and drawing the attention of public health authorities. Most notably, in recent years, there has been an increase in the number of people with co-morbidities of somatic disorders with depression, which has had a significant impact on society. For example, the prevalence of depressive disorders and anxiety disorders is highest among neurology attendees, at 18.55% and 9.99%, respectively, and chronic diseases such as angina, arthritis, asthma, diabetes and even cancer are often co-morbid with depression, which in turn can affect the prognosis of chronic diseases. The prevalence of depression is even higher in the elderly population suffering from these diseases, at 50%. The health impact of depression is even greater than that of chronic illness itself. Two periods of time In recent years, psychology has gradually gained traction and psychotherapy has gained increasing attention. Universities and research institutions have opened psychology programs, and medical institutions and communities are also vigorously carrying out psychological services under the call of the National Health Planning and Family Planning Commission. However, many people still have misgivings about psychotherapy, thinking that it is a disgraceful thing to do, meaning that they have mental problems, and are unwilling to go to psychological services. So, what is psychotherapy? Let’s unravel its mystery. Psychotherapy is an old and often new topic. In the West, psychotherapy was at first integrated with many religious and primitive medical activities, without a systematic theory or complete form. It was not until the 19th century that the Austrian psychologist Sigmund Freud created psychoanalysis. It was not until the Austrian psychologist Sigmund Freud created the doctrine of psychoanalysis in the 19th century that the first formal paradigm of psychotherapy was developed. In China, as early as the Qin and Han dynasties, the “Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine” put forward the “doctrine of yin and yang”, which holds that “the essence of life is based on yin and yang”, and that “if yin prevails, yang will be sick, and if yang prevails, yin will be sick”. “If yang wins, there will be heat; if yin wins, there will be cold”, emphasizing the balance of yin and yang. “As an important element of the ancient Taoist thought of the five arts, it advocates “the arts and numbers, the method of cultivating the body and nourishing the nature”, “those who know, the method of yin and yang, and in the arts and numbers, eating and drinking in moderation, living in moderation, not deluded to labor “, reflecting some of the ancient methods of regulating the spirit and exercising the body to maintain health. Ancient medical thought in China has always called for attention to the physiological and psychological balance of man. Since psychology was separated from philosophy to become an independent discipline, the whole psychology community has seen a prosperous scene of a hundred schools of thought, with no less than a hundred schools of thought, large and small, and roughly 10 schools of thought that are really accepted and widely used by people. Nowadays, psychotherapy refers to the process of using psychological techniques and methods to treat a visitor’s psychological problems with the theoretical system of psychology as a guide and a good doctor-patient relationship as a bridge. Psychotherapy can not only improve clinical symptoms, but also has no adverse effects caused by drugs. Three perspectives Currently, the most commonly used psychotherapies in domestic clinical practice are psychodynamic therapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy and family therapy. Among them, psychodynamic therapy focuses on past experiences and examines its influence in shaping a person’s behavioral style and expectancy patterns that affect health in ways that generally work through repetitive specific cognitions (defenses), interpersonal perceptions, and interaction patterns (empathy). The goal of psychodynamic therapy is to understand the patient’s defense mechanisms and empathic responses, particularly as reflected in the relationship between therapist and patient in the present moment. The duration of psychodynamic therapy generally ranges from a few months to several years and takes the form of short, long and intermittent sessions, with intermittent therapy being the more common form. Long sessions tend to be open-ended, with no end time set at the beginning of the session, and the length of the session depends on the number of areas of conflict presented in the session, etc. Scientific psychological research has concluded that psychodynamic therapy is effective for mood disorders, anxiety disorders, personality disorders, intellectual disorders, and hospitalized patients, and that long course psychodynamic therapy has significant and stable effects for patients with personality disorders, multiple psychiatric co-morbidities, and chronic mental illnesses. Behavior therapy is an operable therapy developed based on the basic ideas and theories of behaviorist psychology. Its main idea is that human behavior is formed through learning and can certainly be changed through learning, and that some practical operational methods can be used to subdue, inhibit, change and replace the original undesirable behavior. Among them, cognitive behavioral therapy incorporates cognitive theory and behavioral therapy, and the two complement each other to form a systematic psychotherapeutic approach. It believes that a person’s cognitive process determines the generation of behavior, and at the same time, the change of behavior can also influence the change of cognition. For patients, the relationship between cognition and behavior interacting with each other exhibits a vicious circle in which misconceptions of cognition lead to maladaptive emotions and behaviors, which in turn influence cognitive processes, giving evidence to the original perceptions, making them more consolidated and hidden, and making the problem more and more serious. Cognitive-behavioral therapy is to change the patient’s irrational cognitive perceptions through corrective techniques, and to always link cognitive correction with behavior correction in an effort to establish a virtuous cycle between the two, replacing the vicious cycle that originally existed, so that the original maladaptive symptoms can be reduced and disappear. Cognitive-behavioral therapy is widely used in clinical settings and has a sound scientific basis. Cognitive behavioral therapy is often used to deal with depression, anxiety, etc. Its purpose is to reduce the pain during the cognitive adjustment process, adjust the thoughts about reality, help patients reconstruct the cognitive structure, evaluate themselves correctly, change their perceptions, correct undesirable emotions or behaviors, and enhance self-confidence, and it can also be used for the treatment of pain, insomnia and primary hypertension. Among them, cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia is currently the most widely used treatment for insomnia. Family therapy was born in the 1950s, just after the end of World War II. In the aftermath of the war, the sudden drastic changes and gathering and scattering of families created a series of problems, such as the stress caused by rash wartime marriages, late marriages, baby boomers, the impact of divorce on families, and the conversion of gender roles. Gradually, more and more psychologists began to recognize the necessity of changing family structures and patterns of interaction in order to treat problematic behaviors or conditions and to maintain treatment outcomes. The greatest contribution of family therapy is that it provides a new framework for understanding the client’s behavior. It goes beyond the original limitation of focusing only on the individual’s internal psychological conflicts, personality traits, and behavior patterns, and places the person and his or her symptoms in the context of the functioning of the whole family to understand and treat them. This is a shift in mindset and perspective from individual to systemic, from linear to cyclical. Research has shown that interventions with family therapy on top of antipsychotic medication can result in lower readmission rates, good improvement in symptoms and social functioning, increased medication compliance, reduced family burden, and shrinking treatment costs for patients with schizophrenia. Family therapy has important applications in adults with affective disorders, neurotic disorders, and substance abuse. Also, family therapy has been shown to be effective for conduct disorders, childhood mood disorders, tic disorders, anorexia nervosa, and school skills development disorders. Family therapy can also be used as an adjunctive treatment for psychosomatic disorders, promoting better adaptation of the patient and family system to the reality of the disorder and improving the family’s resources to cope. Multiple applications Psychotherapy can be used for psychiatric disorders common to psychiatry, but it also has great potential for application in neurology, cardiology, obstetrics and gynecology, gastroenterology, and other fields. A growing number of professionals believe that these departments are also prone to and have a high prevalence of psychological disorders. It is likely that many people will experience: memory loss, beginning to lose things, not recognizing people, forgetting the way home, etc.; sudden discomfort, chest tightness, breathlessness, palpitations, sweating, near-death feeling, etc., with frequent trips to the hospital without corresponding problems with the heart or without being able to explain such a strong reaction; maternal insomnia, fatigue, unhappiness, lack of apparent interest in activities, etc.; stomach discomfort, constipation, loss of appetite, nausea, vomiting, etc. If these symptoms occur, in addition to visiting the above mentioned departments, it is worthwhile to pay more attention to whether something is wrong with your psychological level as well. Of course, psychological counseling or treatment is not only for “patients”, for the general population is also very beneficial, such as encounter interpersonal conflicts, examination anxiety, families encounter marital crisis, parent-child problems, etc., can seek psychological services. At present, mental health hospitals across the country as well as the psychiatry departments (psychosomatic medicine departments) of tertiary general hospitals can provide professional and formal psychological services. Psychotherapy is an integral part of medical development and social harmony, and the development of professional psychological services in hospitals and communities is of great significance. It requires not only that people pay attention to their mental health and have a more objective understanding of psychological counseling and treatment, but it is also imperative to improve the service capabilities of psychological service providers.