Cognitive therapy or cognitive behavior therapy is a kind of psychotherapy used to treat depression, anxiety disorders, phobias, and other forms of mental disorder. It involves recognising distorted thinking and learning to replace it with more realistic substitute ideas. Its practitioners hold that much (though not all) clinical depression is associated with (although not necessarily caused by) irrational thoughts. Cognitive therapy is often used in conjunction with mood stabilizing medications to treat bipolar disorder. According to the U.S-based National Association of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapists: Psychotherapy is a set of techniques intended to improve or cure mental health, emotional or behavioral issues in individuals, who are often called the client. ... Clinical depression is a health condition of depression with mental and physical components reaching criteria generally accepted by clinicians. ... Anxiety disorder is a blanket term covering several different forms of fear, phobia and nervous condition, that come on suddenly and prevent pursuing normal daily routines including: General anxiety disorder Social anxiety, sometimes known as social phobia or social anxiety disorder (SAD) Specific phobias Obsessive-compulsive disorder Agoraphobia Claustrophobia Panic... The term phobia, which comes from the Greek word for fear (φόβος, fobos), denotes a number of psychological and physiological conditions that can range from serious disabilities to common fears to minor quirks. ... The Scream, the famous painting commonly thought of as depicting the experience of mental illness. ... Irrationality is talking or acting without regard of rationality. ... The term cognition is used in several different loosely related ways. ... Therapy (in Greek: θεραπεία) or treatment is the attempted remediation of a health problem, usually following a diagnosis. ... A mood stabilizer is a psychiatric medication used in the treatment of bipolar disorder to suppress swings between mania and depression. ... The artist Edvard Munch, who is now regarded as probably having suffered from bipolar disorder, depicts intense anguish in The Scream Bipolar Affective Disorder, Bipolar Disorder, BPAD, or BP is a mood disorder typically characterized by fluctuations between manic and depressive states; and, more generally, atypical mood regulation and mood...

"There are several approaches to cognitive-behavioral therapy, including Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, Rational Behavior Therapy, Rational Living Therapy, Cognitive Therapy, and Dialectic Behavior Therapy." [1]

Introduction Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) is a psychosocial treatment developed by Marsha M. Linehan specifically to treat Borderline Personality Disorder. ...

Thoughts as the cause of emotions

With thoughts stipulated as being the cause of emotions rather than vice-versa, cognitive therapists reverse the causal order more generally used by psychotherapists. The therapy is essentially, therefore, to identify those irrational or maladaptive thoughts that lead to negative emotion and identify what it is about them that is irrational or just not helpful; this is done in an effort to reject the distorted thoughts and replace them with more realistic alternative thoughts. Thought or thinking is a mental process which allows beings to model the world, and so to deal with it effectively according to their goals, plans, ends and desires. ... Etymologically, the word emotion is a composite formed from two Latin words. ...

Cognitive therapy is not an overnight process. Even after a patient has learned to recognise when and where his thought processes are going awry, it can take months of concerted effort to replace an invalid thought with a more suitable one. With patience and a good therapist, however, cognitive therapy can be a valuable tool in recovery.

Cognitive behavioral therapy

While similar views of emotion have existed for millennia, cognitive therapy was developed in its present form by Albert Ellis and Aaron T. Beck in the 1950s and 1960s. It rapidly became a favorite intervention to study in psychotherapy research in academic settings. In initial studies it was often contrasted with behavioral treatments to see which was most effective. However, in recent years, cognitive and behavioral techniques have often been combined into cognitive behavioral treatment. This is arguably the primary type of psychological treatment being studied in research today. Albert Ellis in 2003. ... Aaron T. Beck, M.D. (born 1921), The Father of Cognitive Behavior Therapy, is a professor at the Psychopathology Research Unit of the University of Pennsylvania. ... // Events and trends The 1950s in Western society was marked with a sharp rise in the economy for the first time in almost 30 years and return to the 1920s-type consumer society built on credit and boom-times, as well as the height of the baby-boom from returning... The 1960s, or The Sixties, in its most obvious sense refers to the decade between 1960 and 1969, but the expression has taken on a wider meaning over the past twenty years. ...

A sub-field of cognitive behavior therapy used to treat Obsessive Compulsive Disorder makes use of classical conditioning through extinction and habituation. Such a procedure has been used successfully by Dr. Steven Phillipson to treat OCD. CBT has also been successfully applied to the treatment of Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Panic Disorder. For other things named OCD, see OCD (disambiguation). ... Classical conditioning, also called Pavlovian conditioning or respondent conditioning, is a type of learning found in animals, caused by the association (or pairing) of two stimuli. ... Habituation is an example of non-associative learning in which there is a progressive diminution of behavioral response probability with repetition of a stimulus. ... Steven Phillipson, Ph. ... General anxiety disorder or generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is an anxiety disorder that is characterized by uncontrollable worry about everyday things. ... A panic attack is a period of intense fear or discomfort, typically with an abrupt onset and usually lasting no more than 30 minutes. ...

Depression

Negative thinking in depression can result from biological sources (i.e., endogenous depression), modeling from parents, peers, or other sources. The depressed person experiences negative thoughts as being beyond their control. The cognitive therapist provides techniques to give the client a greater degree of control over negative thinking by correcting "cognitive distortions" or correcting thinking errors that abet such distortions, in a process called cognitive restructuring. Cognitive therapy and its variants traditionally identify ten cognitive distortions that maintain negative thinking and help to maintain negative emotions. ... In cognitive therapy the process of learning to refute cognitive distortions is called cognitive restructuring. ...

Negative thoughts in depression are generally about one of three areas: negative view of self, negative view of the world, and negative view of the future. These constitute the cognitive triad.

The four column technique

A major technique in cognitive therapy is the four column technique. It consists of a four step process. The first three steps analyze the process by which a person has become depressed or distressed. The first column records the objective situation. In the second column, the client writes down the negative thoughts which occurred to them. The third column is for the negative feelings and dysfunctional behaviors which ensued. The negative thoughts of the second column are seen as a connecting bridge between the situation and the distressing feelings. Finally, the fourth column is used for challenging the negative thoughts on the basis of evidence from the client's experience.

Treating depression with CBA

The newest and most effective cognitive and behavioral therapy for depression is the cognitive behavioral-analysis system of psychotherapy (CBASP). When combined with appropriate antidepressants, it can be extremely effective.

A study published by Martin Keller MD of Brown University and others in the May 18, 2000 New England Journal of Medicine compared the antidepressant Serzone with the talking therapy CBASP. CBASP is largely derivative of other talking therapies such as cognitive, behavioral, and interpersonal therapy. Six hundred eighty-one patients with severe chronic depression (some with other psychiatric illnesses) were enrolled in the trial, and were assigned to either Serzone, CBASP, or combination Serzone-CBASP for 12 weeks. The response rates to either Serzone or CBASP alone were rather underwhelming - 55 percent and 52 percent, respectively, for the 76 percent who completed the study. In other words, a little more than half of the completers in those two arms of the trial reduced their depression by 50 percent or better. Brown University is an Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island. ... May 18 is the 138th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (139th in leap years). ... This article is about the year 2000. ... The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) is a peer-reviewed medical journal published by the Massachusetts Medical Society. ... An antidepressant is a medication used primarily in the treatment of clinical depression. ... Serzone is an antidepressant drug formerly marketed by Bristol-Myers Squibb. ...

The Serzone findings roughly correspond with many other trial results for antidepressants, and underscore a major weakness in these drugs - that while they are effective, the benefit is often marginal and the treatment outcome problematic. Similarly, the CBASP findings validate other studies finding talking therapy about equal in efficacy to taking antidepressants.

The results for the combination drug-therapy group, however, were surprising, with 85 percent of the completing patients achieving a 50 percent reduction in symptoms or better. Forty-two percent in the combination group achieved remission (a virtual elimination of all depressive symptoms) compared to 22 percent in the Serzone group and 24 percent in the CBASP group. Remission is the state of absence of disease activity in patients with known chronic illness. ...

The authors of the study confessed to being caught by surprise by the results, acknowledging that "the rates of response and remission in the combined-treatment group were substantially higher than those that might have been anticipated".

Further reading

• Aaron T. Beck, Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders Plume; Reprint edition (1979): ISBN 0452009286
• David D. Burns, Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy (rev ed); Avon, 1999: ISBN 0380810336
• Albert Ellis, A Guide to Rational Living
• James P. Jr. McCullough, Treatment for Chronic Depression : Cognitive Behavioral Analysis System of Psychotherapy (CBASP) Guilford Press; (August 27, 2003) ISBN 1572309652

Aaron T. Beck, M.D. (born 1921), The Father of Cognitive Behavior Therapy, is a professor at the Psychopathology Research Unit of the University of Pennsylvania. ... David D. Burns, M.D., is the author of Feeling Good - The New Mood Therapy, The Feeling Good Handbook, Ten Days to Self-Esteem and other popular works on cognitive therapy. ... Albert Ellis in 2003. ...

External links

• NACBT Online - What is CBT?
• An Introduction to Cognitive Therapy & Cognitive Behavioural Approaches
• An Introduction to Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy
• New York Institute for Cognitive and Behavioral Therapies
• Moodgym - Training CBT for preventing depression