About Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies
Cognitive and behavioral therapists help people learn to actively cope with, confront, reformulate, and/or change the maladaptive cognitions, behaviors, and symptoms that limit their ability to function, cause emotional distress, and accompany the wide range of mental health disorders. Goal-oriented, time-limited, research-based, and focused on the present, the cognitive and behavioral approach is collaborative; it values feedback from the client, and encourages the client to play an active role in setting goals and the overall course and pace of treatment. Importantly, behavioral interventions are characterized by a “direct focus on observable behavior”. Practitioners teach clients concrete skills and exercises—from breathing retraining to keeping thought records to behavioral rehearsal—to practice at home and in sessions, with the overall goal of optimal functioning and the ability to engage in life fully.
Because cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) is based on broad principles of human learning and adaptation, it can be used to accomplish a wide variety of goals. CBT has been applied to issues ranging from depression and anxiety to the improvement of the quality of parenting, relationships, and personal effectiveness.
A wealth of scientific study has document the helpfulness of CBT programs for a wide range of concerns throughout the lifespan, including children’s behavior problems, health promotion, weight management, pain management, sexual dysfunction, stress, violence and victimization, serious mental illness, relationship issues, academic problems, substance abuse, bipolar disorder, developmental disabilities, Asperger’s syndrome, social phobia, school refusal and school phobia, hair pulling (trichotillomania). Cognitive-behavioral treatments are subject randomized controlled trials and “have been subjected to more rigorous evaluation using RCTs than any of the other psychological therapies”.
Read more about this topic: Association For Behavioral And Cognitive Therapies
Famous quotes containing the word cognitive:
“Ideas are so much flat psychological surface unless some mirrored matter gives them cognitive lustre. This is why as a pragmatist I have so carefully posited ‘reality’ ab initio, and why throughout my whole discussion, I remain an epistemologist realist.”
—William James (1842–1910)