Topic > Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: Meaning, Purpose, and Benefits

Cognitive behavioral therapy is a school of thought that helps patients focus on their views of the world. While they cannot control or change every aspect of their lives, they have the ability to take control over how they interpret and deal with things in their environment. According to Hoffman (2014), “people often experience thoughts or feelings that reinforce or exacerbate mistaken beliefs. Such beliefs can lead to problematic behaviors that can affect numerous areas of life, including family, romantic relationships, work and studies." Contextualizing this concept with a person suffering from low self-esteem shows that they have negative thoughts about their appearance and/or their abilities. Because of these thoughts the individual may begin to avoid social situations or even reject opportunities for advancement at school or work. A cognitive behavioral therapist would help the client identify their problems as a way to deal with destructive thoughts and behaviors. This is the functional analysis phase and it is important for the patient to learn how certain situations and thoughts can contribute to a maladaptive behavior process. The second step is to focus on the behaviors that contribute to the problem. The client will begin to learn new skills to practice so they can later apply them for use in the real world. It may look like learning new coping skills and trying them out so that, in a given situation, the client can use their new found skills to deal with what they struggle with. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay There are a few studies mentioned in this article that outline the benefits of cognitive behavioral therapy. Each study focuses on a group of individuals who benefit greatly from the therapy, as well as highlighting the differences between doctors who are cognitive-behavioral therapists and those who only use cognitive-behavioral techniques. Waller's practice focuses on cognitive-behavioral therapy techniques for eating disorders. Waller conducted a study of 80 clinicians (69 women, 11 men) and asked them to describe what their cognitive-behavioral techniques were and how often they used them during their session. Each doctor is then asked to fill out a questionnaire discussing their methods. The study found that doctors who claimed to use cognitive-behavioral therapy but did not follow the protocol were not very successful in helping their clients. But those who have followed the protocol have seen excellent results for their eating disorder patients. According to Waller (2012), “cognitive behavioral therapy has good results for bulimia nervosa and atypical cases, and some impact on anorexia nervosa”. Those who followed the guidelines for CBT had better outcomes in terms of patient success than those who simply took certain techniques from CBT and did not follow their guidelines. Trockel's study focused on the effects of cognitive-behavioral therapy for insomnia on suicidal ideation in patients. veterans. According to Trockel (2015), “Veterans account for approximately 20% of suicide deaths in the United States, suggesting an urgent need for effective strategies to reduce the incidence of suicide mortality in this population.” He also found that there was a link that demonstrated the link between insomnia and suicidal ideation. Trockel (2012) further states that “…disordersSleep patterns are a stronger predictor of suicidal ideation and behavior among active military personnel than two well-established risk factors: depression and hopelessness." With this study, Trockel found that the best treatment veterans could receive will come from a CBT intervention, which has been shown to have reduced risk among individuals with insomnia compared to the use of other methods. According to Trockel (2012), CBT may be a particularly promising intervention to reduce risk among individuals with insomnia. CBT is also free as drug interactions and death by overdose of prescribed sedative/hypnotic drugs CBT could become the first intervention strategy to be used for veterans due to its promising statistical data was conducted through 4 months of weekly workshops, implementation challenges, video demonstrations, group discussions and 90-minute telephone consultation sessions. Veterans who took part in this study completed a questionnaire before the 4-month cognitive-behavioral sessions, and then received another questionnaire after the 4 months. Hoffman's study focuses on the effect of cognitive-behavioral therapy for anxiety disorders on quality of life. His study consisted of a meta-analysis of 44 studies that included 59 CBT studies, with a total of 3,326 participants receiving CBT for anxiety disorders. In the conclusions of Hoffman (2014) it is stated that "CBT for anxiety disorders is moderately effective for improving the quality of life, especially in the physical and psychological areas". Hoffman (2014) further states that “the study found strong evidence of the beneficial effect of CBT on quality of life. The overall, controlled pre-post effect sizes of CBT on quality of life were moderately strong.” He also conducted a meta-analysis to test whether treatment delivered over the Internet would be more effective than in-person treatment. The study had shown that in-person treatment had a better response than treatment delivered over the Internet. Ehde conducted a study on the effects of cognitive behavioral therapy on chronic pain. He looked at techniques that could be used for chronic pain and found that the most used techniques are relaxation training, setting and working towards behavioral goals, behavioral activation, guidance in the pacing of activities, l training in problem solving and cognitive restructuring. According to Ehde, “Approximately 100 million U.S. adults suffer from chronic pain, a condition influenced by biological, psychological, and social factors and best managed by treatments that address not only its biological causes but also its psychological and social influences and consequences . Over the past 60 years, parallel advances in the scientific understanding of pain and the development of cognitive and behavioral therapies have led to the widespread application of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to chronic pain problems. Indeed, CBT is now a mainstream treatment, alone or in combination with medical or interdisciplinary rehabilitation treatments, for individuals with chronic pain problems of all types.” His research concludes that with the therapeutic techniques found with CBT patients were able to control some of the pain they felt using relaxation and other techniques. The last study evaluated in this article is a study conducted by Jeffery Wood who did a case study on the impact of cognitive behavioral therapy on the severity of autism symptoms observed during school holidays. This study followed 13 children (7-11 years old).