Cognitive behavioural therapy

  • Beck (1967)

  • Predicable (based) upon the theory that maladaptive thought processes can cause the problems in perceptions

  • The therapy is designed to provide improvement on the sufferer’s condition within 16-20 sessions

  • Follows the standard techniques of recognising the irrational beliefs, challenging them, creating new beliefs, testing them out as “homework” and reviewing thee in the next session

    • It seeks to get the patient to recognise where problematic thoughts are coming from and how to consider them

    • Focus upon “activating events” trying to discover what led to the start of the condition

    • The faulty beliefs are then discovered 9i.e. something bad happened as they wished to or because people want to hurt them)

    • The faulty core beliefs that these have caused are then challenged]

    • The therapist supports the patient in producing more rational alternative beliefs, based as much as possible on the patient’s own thought process

Cognitive behavioural therapy for psychosis (CBTp)

  • Basic assumption: people have some sort of distorted beliefs, influencing feelings and behaviours in harmful ways. (e.g. delusions)

  • CBTp used to help patient identify and correct these faulty interpretations

  • Can be delivered in groups, more usual that it is delivered on a one-to-one basis. NICE recommend at least 16 sessions

  • Aim when used in this context is to help people establish links between their thoughts, feelings or actions and their symptoms and functioning by monitoring their thoughts.

  • Proceeds through the following phases:

    • Assessment

    • Sometimes unable to do so, use antipsychotics to suppress those levels until they are able to engage these convos

    • Engagement

      • Building empathy, creating a relationship between therapist and patient

    • The ABC model (Ellis)

    • Normalisation

      • Rationalising beliefs

    • Critical collaborative analysis

    • Developing alternative explanations

AO3

A recent NICE (2014) review of treatments for schizophrenia found consistent evidence that CBTp was an effective form of therapy.