CBT (Cognitive Behaviour Therapy)

• CBT - A method for treating mental disorders based on both cognitive and behavioural techniques

  • Cognitive viewpoint: Aims to deal with thinking, such as challenging negative thoughts
  • Also includes behavioural techniques such as behavioural activation
• Collaborative empiricism:

  • The patient and the therapy agreeing on the goals of therapy
  • Thoughts are treated as hypothesis rather than facts, so they can be tested to see if they're true or not
• Collaborative empiricism:

  The access hypothesis - Individual receives appropriate training so that they can become aware of the content of their own thinking
• Collaborative empiricism:

  The mediation hypothesis - How the individuals think about and interpret life events, and how this influences their emotions and behaviour
• Collaborative empiricism:

  The change hypothesis - Individuals can recover from depression by intentionally modifying their cognitive and behavioural reactions to life events
• CBT: Guided discovery

  • Gives the opportunity for the patient to test their own thinking through observations and experiments
  • Eg: Depressed person writing down when people avoid them, if worried about social interaction
• CBT: Guided discovery - Socratic dialogue

  • Involves therapist asking questions to make it easier for the patient to discover new ways to challenge their maladaptive thoughts
  • Questions phrased in a way that stimulates thought, rather than having a correct answer
• CBT: Cognitive element

  • Begins with an assessment in which the client and therapist work together to clarify the client's problems
  • Jointly identify goals for the therapy and put together a plan to achieve them
• CBT: Cognitive element

  • One of the central tasks is to identify where there might be negative or irrational thoughts that will benefit from challenge
• CBT: Behaviour element

  • Working to change negative and irrational thoughts and finally put more effective behaviours into place
• The idea behind CBT is to identify automatic thoughts about the world, the self and the future - the negative triad

  • Once identified these thoughts must be challenged