Cognitive Behavioral Therapy as Contemporary Practice

Running head: MENTAL HEALTH
Discussion on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy as Contemporary Mental Health Practice
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Author Note

MENTAL HEALTH 1
Introduction
Mental health includes the social, psychological, and emotional well-being of the individual
and is an important aspect contributing to the overall health of the person. There are several theories
associated with mental health, and the principal broad categories include humanistic, cognitive,
psychodynamic, biological, and behaviourism (Bondarenko 2018). Cognition is referred to as the
combination of several critical functions performed by the brain, including the ability to learn, intuition,
language, judgment, and memory functions. Cognitive health contributes to a significant proportion of
the mental health of individuals, including their abilities to remember, learn and think, perform motor
functions, and emotional functionality, which further includes the person’s capability to interpret and
respond to generated emotions (Medalia and Erlich 2017). The initiation of problems in these aspects
may lead to degradation of brain functionality and reducing satisfaction with life and, thus, requires
specialty intervention. There are several theoretical approaches to address such mental health issues,
many of which aim at exploring the root causes of the problem and develop a predictive model to
foretell future incidences (Shah et al. 2018). One of the theoretical approaches is the implementation
of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy techniques, which aims at making the client aware of their
disturbing behavioural pattern and negative interpretations to improve their thought process. The
following sections of the paper will discuss on the Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and explore its
historical origins along with the interpretation of its efficacy. Further discussion on the components of
the CBT, its primary characteristics, the associated pros and cons and the role of therapists for this
therapy approach will be discusses in brief.
Discussion
Historical Origins
Before the origin of techniques to address cognitive behaviour, the roots of the behavioural
treatment goes back to the 1900s. Behavioural conduct treatment for individuals with mental
challenges have been present since the mid-1900s. Pavlov, Skinner, and Watson were primary
advocates of behavioural conduct treatment (Simmons and Griffiths 2017). Behaviourism depends on
the possibility that practices can be estimated, prepared, and even changed.
The evidence suggests that Dr. Aaron T. Beck, a psychiatrist practicing in the University of
Pennsylvania, pioneered the Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) in the 1960s. Dr. Beck started
helping patients distinguish and assess these programmed thought process. He found that the
patients behaved more functionally and felt emotionally better. At the point when patients changed
their fundamental convictions about themselves, their reality, and others, treatment brought about
dependable change (Chand, Kuckel and Huecker 2019). This approach eventually got to be known as
‘cognitive behavioural therapy.’
The early endeavours at behavioural treatment were trailed by the improvement of intellectual
treatment and followed by cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). Conduct treatment developed in free
yet equal ways in the United Kingdom and the United States during 1950 to 1970. The subsequent
stage, the advancement of intellectual treatment, occurred in the U.S. from the mid-1960s onwards
(Fortwengel, Gospel and Toner 2019). The converging of conduct treatment and subjective treatment
into CBT assembled a force in the late 1980s and is presently entrenched in Australia, North America,

MENTAL HEALTH 2
Britain, and few European regions. It is the most comprehensively and unquestionably supported type
of mental treatment and is the pillar of the ground-breaking extension of psychotherapy benefits all
across the globe.
Assumptions about Human Nature
It is here contended that different scholars hold several logical philosophical assumptions
concerning human nature and that these suppositions, regardless of whether expressly perceived by
the scholar or not, play a significant job in their hypothesis development. Underlying assumptions
about the human nature associated with cognitive behaviour include characteristics and their
antonyms behaviour, such knowability - unknowability, homeostasis - heterostasis, proactivity -
reactivity, subjectivity – objectivity, changeability – unchangeability, constitutionalism –
environmentalism, holism – elementalism, rationality – irrationality, and freedom – determinism (Chin
and Hayes 2017). CBT as a psychotherapy framework could be significantly fortified by the
advancement of an increasingly exhaustive hypothesis of human nature at its base. Such a
hypothesis, similar to all character speculations, settles upon certain fundamental logical suppositions
concerning human nature.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) can include a complex skillset of aptitudes to
deliberately recognize, test, and challenge comprehensions and procedures. In addition to this, a
capacity to 'consider thinking' is included in those methodologies that require the client to watch,
recognize, and acknowledge insights and feelings. These procedures include a level of intellectual
development and advancement and require a capacity to take part in conceptual assignments, for
example, seeing occasions from other points of view, creating elective attributions or remaining back,
and inquisitively watching contemplations and feelings.
Components of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
The key components of CBT include core beliefs and automatic thoughts. Core beliefs are the
most focal convictions that individuals have about themselves, others, and their general surroundings.
A patient will start to build up these thoughts in youth as he collaborates with others in his reality
(Edmunds et al. 2017). Some subjective specialists likewise utilize the word compositions to depict
core beliefs.
Automatic thoughts are the thoughts that unconsciously appear in the patient’s head in some
random situation. They are not quite the same as core beliefs, and they identify with the reasoning
that the patient takes part in all the time and is likely not mindful of by any stretch of the imagination.
Automatic thoughts are concise, and the vast majority are generally increasingly mindful of the feeling
that accompanies the idea instead of the idea itself.
Another critical component of CBT is to understand that the patients have their thought
process to comprehend and deciphers, leading to the situation where an occasion is more significant
in deciding the response than the event itself.
Psycho-education
An essential part of all cognitive behavioural projects includes instruction about the
connection between contemplations, emotions, and conduct. The procedure includes building up a
reasonable and shared comprehension of the connection between how individuals think, how they