Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)

 

CBT is a versatile and accessible form of therapy that can be used with adults, adolescents and children to help with emotional coping, mental health difficulties or coping with symptoms of chronic illnesses.

 

CBT tends to focus on the link between thoughts, feelings and behaviours. This may include some consideration of early experiences and childhood patterns but in general there is a here and now focus.

 

It helps you to look at the interaction between thoughts, feelings and behaviours as well as physical feelings and to identify where there may be negative cycles that are contributing to distress. It helps you to be able to develop a range of tools to manage your wellbeing that you can use daily which then helps you to feel actively involved in making helpful changes.

 

There is good evidence for the usefulness of CBT for a range of common mental health problems including anxiety and depression. For obsessive-compulsive disorder there is a type of CBT treatment that works well to reduce the distress of obsessive thoughts and compulsive rituals. This is recommended for both adults and young people.

 

CBT may involve tasks being completed outside of sessions as well, so adults will need to be committed to this, and young people may need support from a carer.

 

CBT works well for a lot of people for a range of difficulties and sessions would be weekly to begin with. Usually there would need to be between 6 and 20 sessions, depending on the individual but your therapist will guide you with what they think is the right length of treatment for you.

 

Some types of cognitive therapy (such as schema focused CBT) look in more detail at patterns of behaviour or thinking that we developed in childhood and how these affect our current behaviour patterns or interpersonal patterns.