What is Cognitive Behavior Therapy?

Cognitive Behavior Therapy, or CBT for short, is a specific type of psychotherapy that is focused on helping people learn new thinking patterns that help them change their emotional states. People who have been treated with CBT usually find that they have symptom relief very early in the therapy process and they tend to find that they can maintain these gains over their lives. They also find that they tend to only need a brief amount of therapy sessions (usually from 5-15 sessions) to achieve their therapeutic goals

CBT is an active therapy that expects a cooperative working relationship between therapist and client (and sometimes family members as well). Clients are taught that they do have control over their emotions and moods and the relationship between the way they think and how they feel. Negative thoughts are confronted and re-evaluated so that the client can actively work towards eliminating first the cause of their emotional problem, then, the problem itself.

Our CBT therapists have worked with hundreds of clients and have had great success with these set of techniques. Many clients have entered treatment with us after years of psychoanalysis or other types of therapy that just did not work for them. After working with them using CBT therapy, they found a new way to deal with their problem and started to feel better- at times, for the first time in many, many years.

Don't just take our word for it- the recent literature and government reviews are chocked full of support for this technique and its efficacy in helping people with anxiety, panic and depression. The following article discusses how brain mapping may be able to show how CBT effects brain function....

Depression

Apr 14 2005 - The Economist, print edition, "Talk is cheap...and surprisingly effective"

"For almost a century after Sigmund Freud pioneered psychoanalysis, "talk therapy" was the treatment of choice for many mental illnesses. Artists and writers lined up to lie down and be analyzed, and the ideas of Freud, Jung, and other influential psychiatrists permeated the intellectual world. They also seeped into the popular consciousness, and still pop up today whenever someone talks of a subconscious desire, a Freudian slip, a death wish, or an Oedipal complex. But advances in neurology, and especially in pharmacology, have called such therapy into question. When psychological and emotional disturbances can be traced to faulty brain chemistry and corrected with a pill, the idea that sitting and talking can treat a problem such as clinical depression might seem outdated." Read More

January 06 2004- Cary Goldberg, Globe Staff, "Brain mapping may guide treatment for Depression"

For the first time, researchers have mapped what happens in the brain when a patient recovers from depression using cognitive behavioral therapy, a common form of psychological treatment aimed at breaking the bad habits of thought that bring people low.

The changes in the pattern of brain activity are quite different from those observed when patients recover with antidepressant drugs, and in some areas, even opposite, according to findings reported yesterday.

The mapping may provide a first step toward using brain scanning to determine which patients should receive antidepressants and which should receive psychological training, a decision that is now often based on trial and error, said Dr. Helen Mayberg, the study's senior author.

"This experiment lays the groundwork for looking for different markers that will help to optimize the treatment for a given individual; that's the really cool part," said Mayberg, a professor of psychiatry and neurology who conducted the study while at the University of Toronto but recently moved to Emory University in Atlanta. Read More

November 21 2003- "Medications or Psychotherapy for Depression?"

That's a question that many people ask. The answer is complex. More antidepressants are prescribed by family practitioners than by psychiatrists. These medications are often the first treatment offered to people who are depressed. Managed care companies like this approach because antidepressant medications are less expensive than psychotherapy. Read More

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Medications or Psychotherapy for Depression?- Leonard Holmes, Ph.D.
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Link to ABCT article on CBT therapy

In-depth recommendations based on an extensive literature review

References:

Antonuccio, David O., Danton, William G., & DeNelsky, Garland Y. Psychotherapy Versus Medication for Depression: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom With Data Professional Psychology: Research and Practice. December 1995 Vol. 26, No. 6, 574-585.

Jacobson, Neil S. Cognitive-Behavior Therapy Versus Pharmacotherapy: Now That the Jury's Returned Its Verdict, It's Time to Present the Rest of the Evidence. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology February 1996 Vol. 64, No. 1, 74-80.

Karon, Bertram P. & Teixeira, Michael A. "Guidelines for the Treatment of Depression in Primary Care" and the APA Response, American Psychologist June 1995 Vol. 50, No. 6, 453-455

Schulberg, Herbert C. Clinical Practice Guidelines for Managing Major Depression in Primary Care Practice Implications for Psychologists, American Psychologist January 1994 Vol. 49, No. 1, 34-41