The cognitive approach to treating depression - TBC Flashcards
What are the two strands of CBT?
Beck’s cognitive therapy
Rational emotive behaviour therapy (REBT)
What is CBT?
the most commonly used psychological treatment for depression and a range of other mental health problems.
What is CBT based on?
based on the concept that thoughts, feelings, physical sensations and behaviours are interconnected, and that negative thoughts and feelings can trap patients in a vicious cycle.
What does CBT aim to do?
This therapy aims to help patients to crack this cycle by breaking down overwhelming problems into smaller parts and showing them how to change these negative and irrational thoughts to improve the way they feel and put more effective behaviours into place.
CBT deals with patients’ current problems, rather than focusing on issues from their past. It looks for practical ways to improve patients’ state of mind on a daily basis.
CBT: homework?
Clients are often asked to complete homework assignments between therapy sessions. This might include asking a person out on a date when they had been afraid to do so before for fear of rejection, looking for a new job, asking friends to tell them what they really think about them, and so on.
Such homework is vital in testing irrational beliefs against reality and putting new rational beliefs into practice.
CBT: behavioural activation?
Focus on encouraging depressed clients to become more active and engage in pleasurable activities.
Therapist and client identify potentially pleasurable activities and anticipate and deal with any cognitive obstacles
What is Beck’s cognitive therapy?
they will help the patient to identify negative thoughts in relation to the self, their world and their future, using Beck’s negative triad. The patient and therapist will then work together to challenge these irrational thoughts, by discussing evidence for and against them.
What does it mean with the ‘client is the scientist’?
The patient will be encouraged to test the validity of their negative thoughts and may be set homework, such as to record when they enjoyed an event or when people were nice to them. This is sometimes referred to as the ‘client is a scientist’, investigating the reality of their negative beliefs in the way a scientist would.
How does Becks homework work in future sessions?
In future sessions, if clients say that no one is nice to them or there is no point in going to events, the therapist can then produce this evidence and use it to prove the client’s statements are incorrect.
What is the process of Beck’s cognitive therapy?
- Identify the thoughts in the negative triad
- Challenge the thoughts
- Test the reality of the negative beliefs
- The patient as a scientist
- Reproduction of evidence
- Behavioural activation
What does Ellis’s REBT stand for?
rational emotive behavaior therapy
What is REBT?
REBT extends the ABC model to an ABCDE model - D stands for dispute and E for effect. The central technique of REBT is to identify and challenge irrational thoughts.
What happens during Ellis’s REBT?
The therapist helps the client apply the ABC model to their daily life. They identify the activating event for their problem before figuring out which beliefs led to their negative feelings. The therapist then works to change these beliefs.
The beliefs are changed through disputation. During disputation, the therapist will challenge the irrational beliefs using direct methods. This would involve a vigorous argument. The intended effect is to change the irrational belief and so break the link between negative life events and depression.
What are the three methods of disputing Ellis identified?
Empirical disputing
Logical disputing
Pragmatic disputing
What is Empirical disputing?
irrational beliefs may not be consistent with reality (e.g. ‘where is the proof that this belief is accurate?’)
