Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Therapy
Close your eyes. Take a deep breath, hold it for six seconds. Let it out slowly. And again deep breath, hold for six seconds, and out. Every once in a while we need to take the time to just breathe. Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy both teach us to take a step back from the situation and look at what it causing us to feel a certain way. I personally wanted to take a look at how we got this form of therapy and its effect on adolescents. For me this was about more than just looking at something different and interesting, but about looking at something that could help me. I have depression and anxiety and if I can find a way to deal with it that works best for me then I’m willing to try. So I looked at the basis of cognitive therapy and some studies to find out what the results were.

Cognitive behavioral therapy has two key scholars Albert Ellis and David Burns. “Ellis proposed an ‘ABC’ model of cognitive behavioral disturbance” and in this model “the letter ‘A’ stands for an activating event, ‘B’ refers to a belief system, and ‘C’ stands for the consequences of A through B”. Ellis theorized that “moods of individuals [or C’s]” could be changed by “a change in how activating events are perceived”. For Burns “the key element [was]…the human tendency to overgeneralize”. Burns formulated Ten Basic Cognitive Distortions, giving a term and a definition. Both Ellis and Burns are considered to be founders of CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy.

For depression and anxiety there are many forms of treatment. “70-80% of patients [however] are not willing to take [antidepressant medication] for a long period of time”. Major depressive disorder is experienced by a large majority of people “and the probability of another episode increases with each relapse or recurrence”. A study done by Catherine S. Ames, Jessica Richardson, Susanna Payne, Patrick Smith & Eleanor Leigh published in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Journal states that “MBCT [mindfulness-based cognitive therapy] is proposed to reduce risk in part through increasing awareness of the ruminative cycles and thinking styles associated with relapse vulnerability”. The results of this study showed that “eleven young people met inclusion criteria…seven completed the course” and due to the small size of the participation group, “analysis of outcome measures [are] limited”. However, “this study has indicated that MBCT with adolescents, targeted at symptoms of low mood, is feasible”.

Overall this form of therapy has progressed farther in recent years than Burns and Ellis’ models and become an actual practice. Taking deep breathes and counting to ten are our usual ways to calm our emotions and now science has started formulating ways for it to be used in treatment of mental illnesses.

Could it be used to treat more than anxiety and depression?
-What can we do to make this treatment more effective?
-Should the basis of it be taught to kids early on to try and prevent depression and anxiety later in life?

1 thought on “Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

  1. I took into consideration the last question listed because I was recently diagnosed with anxiety, and was wondering if there was any way I could have prevented it. Children ages 7 and younger do not have the maturity to have CBT run as smoothly as older children and adults do. I read about an experiment held by a university anxiety clinic with 37 children, ranging from ages 3-7. In this experiment, each child was asked questions about their day/week and they were to answer with “good” or “not so good”. After 4 to 5 weeks of sessions, if no improvement was shown, the children were put on medication. If patients were showing improvement or had control of over 65% of their fears/worries, appointments were scheduled for biweekly or even monthly sessions to continue to control their anxiety. Below I have attached the link for the article I received my information from.

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2868557/

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