Treatment for Depression

• Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT):

  • Aims to identify and challenge the irrational and negative thoughts, which ultimately lead to depression
  • Aims to replace these thoughts with more positive ones
  • The behavioural element of CBT encourages patients to test their beliefs through behavioural experiments and homework
• The Process of CBT:

  1. Initial Assessment - clarify and assess issues
  2. Goal Setting - patient and therapist agree on a set of goals and plan of action
  3. Challenge - identifying the irrational thoughts and challenging them
  4. Homework - giving the patient homework tasks that involve collecting evidence that disputes their irrational thoughts

  There are 2 main types of CBT that both involve identifying and addressing irrational thoughts, but in slightly different ways; Beck's CBT and Ellis' REBT
• Beck's CBT:

  • Helps the patient identify and challenge irrational thoughts in relation to themselves, their world and future
  • Patient and therapist will then work together to challenge these irrational thoughts by discussing evidence for and against them
  • Patient is encoraged to test the validity of their negative thoughts and may be set homework to challenge and test their negative thoughts
• Ellis' REBT:

  • Ellis' ABC model was developed to include D (dispute) and E (effective) (ABCDE)
  • The main idea is to challenge irrational thoughts but unlike Beck wheras collecting evidence through homework was used, Ellis emphasises the use of 'disputing methods' -> the therapist disputes the irrational beliefs either through:

  Logical Disputing - is the belief logically viable

  Pragmatic Disputing - whether the irrational belief is useful or not

  Empirical Disputing - do the beliefs have evidence to support them
• Thought-Catching:

  • Catch - identify the irrational thought
  • Check - how useful is the thought, does it cause any unecessary stress etc
  • Change - using disputing methods to change the irrational (negative) thought to a rational (positive) one