Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Psychology AQA A-level notes

Cognitive Behaviour Therapy:

Cognitive Behaviour Therapy: A method for treating mental disorders on both cognitive and behavioral techniques. From the cognitive viewpoint, the therapy aims to deal with thinking, such as challenging negative thoughts.

Irrational thoughts: Also called dysfunctional thoughts. In Ellis’s model, these thoughts interfere with a persons happiness.

Evaluation:
Is it effective?
-Lots of evidence to support the effectiveness of CBT for depression. E.g a study by March et al. (2007) compared to the effects of CBT with anti depressant drugs and a combination of the two in 327 adolescents with a main diagnosis of depression.

-After 36 weeks, 81% of CBT group, 81% of the antidepressants group and 86% of the CBT plus antidepressants group had significantly improved.

-The CBT were shown to be just as effective as medication and helpful alongside medication.

-This implies that there is a good case for making CBT the first choice of treatment in public health care systems, like NHS.

CBT may not work for the most severe cases:
-Sometimes the patients depression can be so severe that patients cant motivate themselves to engage with the hard cognitive work of CBT. They may not even be able to pay attention to what’s happening in each session.

-In this case, it is better to treat patient with antidepressants and then comments CBT. CBT cannot be used as…