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Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Cognitive-Behavior Therapy (CBT) or Cognitive Therapy (CT) is a type of psychotherapeutic intervention that attempts to reduce the suffering of painful emotions and behavior by assuming that these negativities are the result of faulty perceptions, concepts, and beliefs. Cognitive therapists believe that emotional and behavioral reactions are the result not of triggering situations but of beliefs about these situations.

CBT, which developed from behavior therapy and Rational-Emotive Therapy, is currently in wide use for the treatment of many mental health problems, including anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, eating disorders, mood disorders, insomnia, psychosis, negative habits, couples discord, children’s problems, and character pathology.

There are several distinguishing features of CBT techniques; for example,

1) They follow a careful, initial assessment so that treatment plans are specifically tailored to problems of the individual at hand;

2) With the exception of behavior therapy, they are more widely validated and researched than any other form of clinical intervention;

3) They have similar types of assessment and intervention procedures across disorders; e.g., keeping a cognition diary; questioning painful beliefs; facing situations that have been inappropriately avoided; and experimenting with different and more positive behavior in the face of challenging circumstances; and

4) They are “present-oriented”, focusing upon what can be done to solve a problem in the here-and-now, as opposed to psychoanalytic approaches which are more explorative, focusing upon greater understanding of how problems developed in the past.

CBT has shown very good results in numerous studies comparing it with medication and/or to other psychotherapies for the treatment of anxiety disorders (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Panic Disorder, Social Phobia) and depression. One of the most encouraging results of this research is that CBT often reduces relapse rates significantly once therapeutic gains have been observed