Psychology · Ch 5 — Therapeutic Approaches
Cognitive Behaviour Therapy
Cognitive Behaviour Therapy
Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, or CBT, is currently the most popular form of psychotherapy. Its rise to prominence is not accidental — research into therapy outcomes has consistently shown that CBT is both short in duration and highly effective for a wide range of psychological disorders. These include anxiety, depression, panic attacks, and borderline personality disorder, among others.
What makes CBT so broadly applicable is its foundation in the bio-psychosocial approach. This means that when a therapist uses CBT, they do not look for a single cause of the client’s distress. Instead, they understand that the client’s problems have roots in three interconnected realms: biological, psychological, and social.
The core rationale of CBT is that distress originates in all three realms — biological, psychological, and social — so treatment must address all three.
CBT is not a single technique but a combination of two major therapeutic traditions: cognitive therapy and behaviour therapy. The cognitive part works on changing faulty thinking patterns, while the behavioural part uses techniques to modify maladaptive actions. Together, they form a comprehensive treatment package.
Because CBT adopts this bio-psychosocial view, its techniques are tailored to each realm:
- Biological aspects are addressed through relaxation procedures, which help calm the body’s stress response.
- Psychological aspects are tackled using both behaviour therapy techniques (like exposure or reinforcement) and cognitive therapy techniques (like challenging irrational beliefs). …