Cognitive Approach

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Cognitive Approach
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Treatment
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
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• CBT can help you to change how you think
  ("Cognitive") and what you do ("Behaviour)".
  These changes can help you to feel better.
• Unlike some of the other talking treatments, it
  focuses on the "here and now" problems and
  difficulties. Instead of focussing on the causes
  of your distress or symptoms in the past, it
  looks for ways to improve your state of mind now.

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CBT can help you to make sense of overwhelming
problems by breaking them down into smaller
parts. This makes it easier to see how they are
connected and how they affect you. These parts
are  

• A Situation - a problem, event or difficult
  situationFrom this can follow
• Thoughts
• Emotions
• Physical feelings
• Actions

Each of these areas can affect the others. How
you think about a problem can affect how you feel
physically and emotionally. It can also alter
what you do about it.  
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• It is one of the most effective treatments for
  conditions where anxiety or depression is the
  main problem.

• It is the most effective psychological treatment
  for moderate and severe depression

• It is as effective as antidepressants for many
  types of depression .
• CBT has even been shown to ease the symptoms of
  schizophrenia, which was until recently believed
  to be untreatable by psychological therapies.

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Harrington et al (1998) found some key published
reviews of CBT effectiveness have ignored studies
that show CBT in a less positive light.

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• A very large number of studies now support the
  effectiveness of CBT. An exciting recent
  development has been in the application of CBT
  to treat schizophrenia and related conditions.
  Until recently, it was widely believed that this
  type of disorder was not treatable by
  psychological therapies, but there is now
  research to show that in some patients, symptoms
  can be alleviated by CBT.

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• Until recently, it has been widely believed that
  schizophrenia does not respond to psychological
  therapies and can only be treated by drugs.
  However, Chadwick, Sambrooke, Rasch and Davies
  (2000) found that CBT is effective in tackling
  the cognitive aspects of schizophrenia and it
  appears that improvements in this area have a
  positive effect on patients quality of life

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• Most studies have focused on the short-term
  benefits on patients with symptoms of one
  condition. However, we know little about the
  long-term effects of CBT or its effects on
  patients with a broad range of symptoms.