Cognitive Treatments

• Cognitive behavioural therapy uses behavioural and cognitive techniques to change their behaviour and cognition. They identify the problem and the therapist tries to make the patient aware of the difference between thoughts, emotions and actions.
• Beck proposed cognitive therapy as a treatment for depression which helps clients recognise negative thoughts and errors in logic which cause depression. It identifies automatic thoughts about the negative triad which are then challenged. It tests the reality of the beliefs and the patient is often given homework.
• Beck's Cognitive Therapy: Evaluation

  Butler & Beck reviewed 14 meta-analyses that investigated the effectiveness of cognitive therapy and concluded that 80% of adults benefit from it. This provides validity for CT and shows real life application. Cognitive therapy is better and more effective than drug therapy and has a lower relapse rate which supports the cognitive bias of depression.
• Ellis proposed the rational emotive behaviour therapy which resolves emotional and behavioural problems by changing irrational beliefs to rational beliefs by challenging them through reality testing. He extended his ABC explanation to ABCDE. D stands for dispute, which is when the therapist and patient have a dispute about how it is an irrational belief through an empirical argument, asking if there is evidence, and a logical argument, asking if there is logic. The E stands for effect to change the irrational belief and break the link between negative events and depression.
• Ellis' REBT: Evaluation

  Unreliable research support:

  • Multiple supporting studies were conducted on people with experimentally induced or non-clinical problems such as a Kriss & Kendall's study on people with a mild fear of spiders.
  • However recent studies such as Lyons and Woods have been done on actual clinical studies and found that REBT is useful.