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COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL THERAPY FOR DEPRESSION Cognitive behavioral therapy helps improve peoples moods and behavior by changing their way thinking; also, how they interpret events and talk to themselves. This form of psychotherapy helps guide people into thinking more realistically and teaches them coping strategies to deal with their depression. Cognitive therapy is in most cases a short-term treatment that can have long-term results. I will discuss depression in adolescence and how it effects personal adjustments, which may often continue into adulthood. I will also discuss depression in the elderly. There are different approaches to treating depression, the main approach that will be discussed is cognitive behavioral therapy, which is a way to break the cycle for depression.
What is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy? Cognitive behavior therapy helps people break the connections between difficult situations and their habitual reactions to them. This can be reactions such as fear, rage or depression, and self-defeating or self-damaging behavior. It also teaches people how to calm their mind and body, so they can feel better, think more clearly, and make better decisions. Cognitive therapy also teaches people how certain thinking patterns are causing their symptoms.
This is accomplished by giving people a distorted picture of what's going on in their life, and making them feel anxious, depressed or angry for no good reason. (Francis, 2000) When people are in behavior therapy and cognitive therapy, it provides them with various tools for stopping their symptoms and getting their life on a more satisfying track. In cognitive therapy, the therapist takes an active part in solving a patients problems. He or she doesn't settle for just nodding wisely while the patient carries the whole burden of finding the answers they came to therapy for initially. Cognitive therapists teach patients to identify their negative thoughts, recognize their erroneous nature and devise a corrective plan that leads to more positive assessments and an ability to deal more realistically with every day problems. (Burns, 1996 - 2000) Dr.
Frances M. Christian, a clinical social worker and cognitive therapist at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond, says, Thoughts and beliefs have a lot to do with how people feel and behave. Early in life, people develop core beliefs about themselves and other people and about how the world operates. Cognitive behavioral therapy has been very thoroughly researched. In study after study, it has been shown to be as effective as drugs in treating both depression and anxiety. In particular, cognitive behavioral therapy has been shown to be better than drugs in avoiding treatment failures and in preventing relapse after the end of treatment.
A cognitive therapist directs a patient's attention to "automatic" thoughts, the things people say to themselves, that result in unpleasant feelings. (Stop, 2000) For example, someone prone to anxiety attacks might automatically think, "I'm going to mess up, " when taking an exam, participating in a school event or being interviewed for a job. After failing such a task, the person might conclude, again automatically, "I'm a loser. " In therapy, the person is helped to recognize delusions in thought, which include exaggerating the sense of threat, anticipating disaster as the outcome, and over generalizing from one negative experience and ignoring times when things went well. Finally, once the damaging automatic thoughts are recognized, the person is helped to examine how realistic they are, and they consider alternative explanations, then imagine other outcomes and realize that the symptoms of anxiety are not the prelude to a heart attack or some other medical disaster. (Stop, 2000) This same approach is practiced for depression. The difference in the therapeutic approach versus medicating is dramatic, and the relief people feel is immediate. Instead of dwelling on the negative, which the other therapists sometimes do, they acquire therapeutic tools the depressed can apply on his or her own, in case they may find themselves slipping into old patterns of thought or behavior. (Stop, 2000) Furthermore, studies have shown that the results of cognitive therapy are long lasting, with relapse rates much lower than with other modes of treatment, including psychiatric drugs. And while medication is sometimes used, at least briefly, to relieve intense emotional disturbances and improve receptivity to therapy, most patients can be spared the side effects of drugs, which may include the inability to function sexually, upset stomach, difficulty sleeping and difficulty concentrating. (Brody, 1996) While no one approach to psychotherapy is appropriate for everyone, many thousands of patients have benefited from the strategies unique to cognitive therapy.
In the 30 or so years since the approach was developed by Dr. Aaron T. Beck, a world-renowned psychiatrist at the Beck Center for Cognitive Therapy in Philadelphia, it has become the most scientifically tested model of psychotherapy. (Brody, 1996) According to Dr. Judith S. Beck and Dr. Aaron Beck, her daughter, Patients have continual unpleasant thoughts and that each thought deepens the depression.
However, these thoughts are not based on facts and result in feelings of sadness this is far beyond what the situation guarantees, it has to do with hypothetical situations. Depressed persons make such mistakes over and over, Quinn has written. In fact, they may misinterpret friendly overtures as rejections. They tend to see the negative, rather than the positive side of things. Plus they do not check to determine whether they may have made a mistake in interpreting events. (Quinn, 1998) Depressed thinking often takes the form of negative thoughts about oneself, the present, and the future. The mood in depression is almost always experienced as sad.
According to a patients letter written and later published with the permission of William Morrow and Company, (publisher of Mood swing): from the book, Depression and its Treatment, her experience with this mood disorder was despair and uselessness. Eventually she found herself going to sleep earlier at night just to stop the anxious thoughts entering her mind. The patient says her appetite got worse and she became physically ill with the progression of her depression. The statement later reads, If I had to see a psychiatrist, it meant that I was probably going insane, and this thought made me even more frightened. It was more than I could stand. The fear of being mentally ill was so horrible that I decided to take my entire bottle of sleeping pills rather than face the shame of being a mental patient. (Great & Jefferson, 1992) Depression can strike anyone at any given time.
It affects 5 % of the population at any time and at least 10 % of the population at some point in their lifetime. At least 10 % of the people with major depression end their lives by suicide. (Great & Jefferson 1992) How prevalent are mood disorders in children and is an adolescent with changes in mood considered clinically depressed? Oster has said the reason why depression is often over looked in children and adolescents are because children are not always able to express how they feel. (Oster & Montgomery 1997) Sometimes the symptoms of mood disorders take on different forms in children than in adults. Adolescence is a time of emotional turmoil, mood swings, gloomy thoughts, and over sensitivity, it is also a time of rebellion and experimentation. Therefore, the diagnosis should not lie only in the physicians hands but be associated with parents, teachers and anyone who interacts with the child on a daily basis. Unlike adult depression, symptoms of adolescent depression are often camouflaged.
Instead of expressing sadness, teenagers may express boredom and irritability, or may choose to get involved in risky behaviors. (Oster & Montgomery, 1995) The key indicators of adolescent depression include a drastic change in eating and sleeping patterns, significant loss of interest in previous activities, aggression and boredom. The signs of clinical depression include marked changes in mood and associated behaviors that range from sadness, withdrawal, and decreased energy to intense feelings of hopelessness and suicidal thoughts. Depression is often described as an exaggeration of the duration and intensity of normal mood changes (Oster & Montgomery, 1995), constant boredom, disruptive behavior, peer problems, and increased irritability and aggression. (OConnor 1997) For many teens, symptoms of depression are directly related to low self-esteem coming from increased emphasis on peer popularity. For other teens, depression arises from poor family relations which could include decreased family support and perceived rejection by parents (Quinn, 1998). Adolescent suicide is now responsible for more deaths in children age 15 to 19 than cancer (Oster & Montgomery, 1997). Whereas, Oster & Montgomery stated that when parents are struggling over marital or career problems, or are ill themselves, teens may feel the tension and try to distract their parents.
This distraction could include increased disruptive behavior, self-inflicted isolation and even verbal threats of suicide. So how can the physician determine when a patient should be diagnosed as depressed or suicidal? Quinn suggested the best way to diagnose is to screen out the vulnerable groups of children and for the risks factors of suicide and then refer them to treatment. Some of these risk factors include verbal signs of suicide within the last...
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Research essay sample on Cognitive Therapy For Depression
