Cognitive Behaviour Therapy

• Cognitive behaviour therapy

  It’s the most commonly used psychological treatment for depression and a range of other mental health problems.
• Cognitive behaviour therapy

  • Cognitive element - CBT begins with an assessment in which the client and the therapist work together to clarity the clients problems. They jointly identify goals for the therapy and put together a plan to achieve them. A central task is to identify where there might be negative or irrational thoughts that will benefit from the challenge.
  • Behaviour element- CBT then involves working to change negative and irrational thoughts and finally put more effective behaviours into place.
• Beck’s cognitive therapy 1/2

  The idea is to identify automatic thoughts about the world, the self and the future (negative triad). Once the thoughts are identified, they must be challenged. This is the central component of the therapy. Cognitive therapy also aims to help clients test the reality of their negative beliefs as well as challenging the thoughts directly.
• Beck’s cognitive therapy 2/2

  They might be set homework - to record when they enjoyed an event or when people were nice to them. This is referred to as the client as scientist investigating the reality of their negative beliefs

  in the way a scientist would. If in future sessions clients say they don't enjoy events or no-one is nice to them, the therapist can produce this evidence and use it to prove the clients statements are incorrect.
• Ellis‘ rational emotive behaviour therapy 1/2

  REBT extends the ABC model to the ABCDE model: Activating event, Beliefs, Consequences, Dispute, Effect. The central technique of REBT is to identity and dispute challenge irrational thoughts. Eg. A client may talk about how unlucky they've been and how unfair life is. An REBT therapist would identify these as examples of utopianism and would challenge this as an irrational belief, which would involve a rigorous argument. The intended effect is to change the rational belief and therefore, break the link between negative life events and depression.
• Ellis‘ rational emotive behaviour therapy 2/2

  The rigorous argument is the hallmark of REBT. Ellis identified different methods of disputing:

  • an empirical argument involves disputing whether there is central evidence to support the negative belief
  • a logical argument involves disputing whether the negative thought logically flows from the fads.
• Behavioural activation

  As individuals become depressed, they tend to increasingly avoid difficult situations and become isolated , this maintains or worsens symptoms. The goal of behavioural activation is to work with depressed individuals to gradually decrease their avoidance and isolation and increase their engagement in activities that have been shown to improve mood; exercising, going out to dinner etc. The therapist aims. to reinforce such activity.