Cognitive therapists tend to focus on specific problems. Irrational beliefs or faulty perceptions may cause dysfunctions. An example will illustrate the process: Having made a mistake, a person believes, “I’m useless and can’t do anything right.” A cognitive therapist may work with a client to change thought patterns. This type of therapy is often highly effective when treating specific problems.
Benefits of CBT:
- Focuses on specific problems
- identify irrational or maladaptive thoughts, assumptions and beliefs that are related to debilitating negative emotions (feeling worthless, depressed, anxious, etc)
- identify the thoughts that are dysfunctional, inaccurate, or simply not helpful
- learn to reject the distorted thoughts
- replace distorted cognitions with more realistic and self-helping alternatives
A large-scale study in 2000[11] showed substantially higher results of response and remission (73% for combined therapy vs. 48% for either CBT or a particular discontinued antidepressant alone) when a form of cognitive behavior therapy and that particular discontinued anti-depressant drug were combined than when either modality was used alone.