COGNITIVE BEHAVIOURAL THERAPY

Also known as CBT.

This is a therapy that I did about 8 years. I still have all the information and workbooks in my house. I wanted to update my skills though so I researched it.

CBT involves helping people find new ways to behave by changing there thought pattern. When I was looking at the history of CBT I found a couple of dates. Behavioural therapy and cognitive therapy where used separately all the way back till the 1920’s. Freud was big with the cognitive therapy. Albert Ellis and Aaron T Beck are the one’s that are truly responsible for CBT in the 1980’s and 1990’s.

CBT can be seen as having six phases:

1. Assessment or psychological assessment
2. Reconceptualization
3. Skills acquisition
4. Skills consolidation
5. Generalization and maintenance
6. Post- treatment assessment and follow up

The steps in the assessment phase include:

1. Identify critical behaviours
2. Determine whether critical behaviours are excesses or deficits
3. Evaluate critical behaviours for frequency, duration, or intensity ( obtain a baseline).
4. If excess, attempt to decrease frequency, duration, or intensity of behaviours; if deficits, attempt to increase behaviours.

In my next post we can dig further into this.