Cognitive Behavioural Therapy - Essay Example

? Cognitive Behavioural Therapy First School Affiliation BACKGROUND Cognitive behavioural therapy is a psychotherapeutic way of addressing maladaptive actions, cognitive contents and processes and dysfunctional emotions through several goal-oriented, precise methodical techniques. Study shows that CBT is an efficient treatment for other panic attacks, but there is a lack of high number of professional physicians and practitioners to provide CBT. Practitioners that deal with patients with anxiety and depressive disorders use a combination of behavioral and cognitive treatment. Cognitive behavioural treatment was mainly developed through an incorporation of cognitive psychology research with behavior therapy. Cognitive behavioural therapy focusses on the problem of the patient and the action that the therapist takes to help the patient. OBJECTIVE/S OF THE REVIEW Researchers’ studies and journals, on cognitive behavioral therapy, uses patients with mental disorder in order to express and draw conclusions on the effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy on the patients with disorder. I will base my article on their research and show how effective cognitive behavioral therapy has been to patients with disorders. SEARCH STRATEGY I used two types of databases: Informit and Eric. To perform the search I had to use some terms that would lead me to the databases. The first was key words I used were ‘Cognitive behavioural therapy’ that had 41 results. The next search I used ‘Reducing anxiety’. These came up with a result of 119. The other searches that I conducted had the following terms and results: Effective therapy had 6 results, Mental disorder had 11813 results, Cognitive attitude had 58 results, Reduce anxiety had a result of 84, Effective treatment had 3790 results, Cognitive behavioural treatment had 659 results, Minimize anxiety had 2 results, Behavioural therapy had 1072 results, Decrease anxiety had 54 results, Cognitive behavioural had 98 results, Active therapy had 1054 results, and attitude therapy had 440 results. In my data, I have excluded all the patients who dropped out of the therapy sessions because we are interested in the effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy being administered fully to the patients. Those who have dropped out have not received the therapy as they are supposed to. SELECTION CRITERIA The choice of sources to use was dependent on inclusion criteria. To be included in the study, you had to be a patient suffering a disorder. The studies carried out were quantitative majorly because they relied more on the statistics to come up with findings. The participants in the studies were chosen using the inclusion criteria (suffering from a form of mental disorder). The participants were studied and data was collected to come up with statistics that showed the level of effectiveness of the cognitive behavior therapy (Richards et al. 2006, p. 8). The main method used in the sources was the random controlled trial. The participants who met the inclusion criteria would randomly get assigned to various scenarios and they were observed on how they were doing and data was collected for analysis. There was also use of the cohort study where the participants had matching inclusion criteria and hence observations were carried out on the cohort/group. MAIN RESULTS (use sub-headings as appropriate) Social phobia. According to Richards et al. 2006, the cognitive behavioral therapy was successful in reducing the symptoms of social phobia that was coming from the interaction with the internet among the participants in his study. He carried out his study on participants who had phobia of accessing their e-mail. This was concurred with by in a study by Carlbring et al. 2006 who also carried out a study on social phobia in his participants. He used cognitive behavioral therapy on the participants using a method referred to as bibliotherapy where each participant was to have access to internet and instructions were sent through e-mail to the patients until eventually at the end of the study, there was a reduction in the degree of phobia in the participants. CBT has been proved to handle cases of social phobia in a more effective way than other forms of therapy and its results are thus registered to have a significant improvement on patients with social phobia (Carlbring et al. 2006). CBT for Managing Stress. Anxiety is a normal reaction towards stress and thus there is need to manage stress. To effectively eliminate anxiety there is need to be able to manage the stress. Stress has also been found to leave you vulnerable to stress. CBT focusses on the problem of the patient. Use 2 - 6 references in each theme please. Thus there is need for good therapy therefore study was conducted by Ahmed & Lawn who set out to see how use this form of therapy was towards those with anxiety and depression which are related to stress. The results were desirable proving that CBT was useful to the management of these negative feelings (Ahmed & Lawn p. 238). These findings have been concurred with in several other studies where the effectiveness of CBT was also realised (Hawkins et al. 1). Supporting research can also be found in Manur-Elmer project that was interested in using CBT in group therapy. CBT has been recorded to always meet the desired results and thus has been labelled to be effective in stress management (Mazur-elmer & Mcbride 2009). Mothers who are suffering from postnatal stress have been put under CBT and there was overall progress in the reduction of stress among the mothers (Craig et al 2005). CBT and Panic Attack. There are people who suffer from panic attacks and there is need to identify the best form of therapy that should be carried out on them. CBT was used so as to evaluate its usefulness in treating patients of suffering from panic attacks due to social phobia. CBT worked in handling the panic attack (Richards et al. 2006). This was also observable in another study interested in effectiveness of psychotherapeutic interventions using CBT on the patients with panic attack (Jahoda et al. 2008). Manur-Elmer also did a research based on the same scope and the results showed that CBT is effective on patients with panic disorders (Mazur-elmer & Mcbride 2009). CBT and Mental Disorder. Mental disorder range in their levels of seriousness. One such level is the patients who are under case management because their mental status was serious. A study was carried out to find out the effects of CBT on these patients. It was seen that CBT had positive results on the patients than the standard care therapy (Lergesner & Caltabiano 2012). Patients with psychosis were also put under CBT to help treat them. Compared to other forms of therapy, CBT registered the highest degree of efficacy on patients dealing with psychosis (Farhall & Thomas p. 512). Other mental patients who have been put under CBT to support the study are those suffering from schizophrenia. Using evidence based medicine based on CBT; there were progressive results on patients making CBT effective to mental disorders (college of psychiatrists, 2005, pp 13). SUMMARY OF RESULTS There was a reduction in the level of panic from the participants in the research after use of CBT (Richards et al. 2006, p. 13). The patients suffering from a combination of anxiety, depression or/and panic attack, a condition referred to as comorbidity, were observed to have a reduction in the symptoms (Ahmed & Lawn p. 242, Hawkins et al. 5 and Mazur-elmer & Mcbride 2009 p. 5). There was positive change in the patients with serious mental illness (Lergesner & Caltabiano 2012 p. 169). Mothers in postnatal stage were registered to be happier after CBT (Craig et al 2005, 295). The patients with interpersonal problems were motivated to enact change in their life (Jahoda et al. p. 11). Patients suffering from social phobia were satisfied with CBT (Carlbring et al. p. 8). Compared to other forms of therapy, CBT registered the highest degree of efficacy on patients dealing with psychosis (Farhall & Thomas p. 512). CBT is effective in reducing symptoms of schizophrenia compared to standard care (college of psychiatrists, 2005, pp 13). CONCLUSION In this study, I intended to find out whether cognitive behavioral therapy was an effective way to treat patients suffering from mental disorders. I embarked on reviewing results from other studies conducted on mental patients who have been treated using cognitive behavioral therapy. I have come to a conclusion that cognitive behavioral therapy is an effective form of therapy to patients with mental disorders. Patients receiving the cognitive behavior therapy were observed to register great improvement compared to those who received standard care. From the summary of results, there is enough evidence from the statistics collected that there is improvement of all patients who underwent cognitive behavior therapy. IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE The implications of cognitive behavior therapy to those suffering from disorders are good implications. The disorder patients are able to see a reduction in the symptoms they were exhibiting and there is positive feedback in their behavior such as reduced anxiety, depression and stress. REFERENCES Ahmed and Sharon, L. 2012. Does Starting With the Behavioural Component of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) Increase Patients’ Retention in Therapy? Behaviour Change, 29(4): 238–257. Craig, E. et al. 2005. Therapeutic Group Programme for Women with Postnatal Depression in Rural Victoria: A Pilot Study. Australas Psychiatry, 13: 291. Carlbring, P. et al. 2006. Internet cognitive behavioural therapy for panic disorder: Does the inclusion of stress management information improve end-state functioning? Clinical Psychologist, 10(1): 30 – 38. Farhall, M. and Neil, T. 2012. Cognitive and behavioural therapies for psychosis. Aust N Z J Psychiatry, 47: 508. Hawkins, K. et al. 2007. Evaluation of a stress management course in adult education centres in rural Australia. Aust. J. Rural Health, 15:107–113. Jahoda et al. 2008. Cognitive behavioural therapy: from face to face interaction to a broader contextual understanding of change. Clinical Psychologist, 53(9):759–771. Lergesner, B. and Louise, C. 2012. A cognitive behavioural intervention for case managed clients. Advances in Mental Health, 10(2): 169–180. Mazur-Elmer, A. & Dawn, M. 2009. Treating social anxiety in adolescents: ten group therapy Lesson plans. Campus Alberta Applied Psychology. Richards, J. et al. 2006. An open study of Internet-based bibliotherapy with minimal therapist contact via email for social phobia. Clinical Psychologist, 10(1):2 – 15. Royal Australian And New Zealand College Of Psychiatrists Clinical Practice Guidelines Team For The Treatment Of Schizophrenia and Related Disorders. 2005. Treatment of Schizophrenia and Related Disorders. Aust N Z J Psychiatry, 39: 1. Read More