Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) Essay: Therapeutic Interventions

This essay provides a comprehensive overview of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), a goal-oriented, short-term psychological therapy. It explores CBT's principles, its effectiveness in treating various mental health disorders, including anxiety and depression, and its application in clinical settings. The essay discusses the interactive nature of CBT, its aim to modify negative thought patterns, and the typical structure of therapy sessions. It highlights several studies that support CBT's efficacy, including its cost-effectiveness and positive outcomes in treating children, adolescents, and patients with insomnia. The essay concludes by emphasizing the importance of CBT, alone or in combination with traditional treatments, as a valuable therapeutic intervention. It is supported by numerous academic references in APA format, as required by the assignment brief.

Running head: COGNITIVE BEHAVIOURAL THERAPY
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Introduction
Around the different countries of this world, the issue of mental health problems has
become very common and a countable number of people are suffering from this condition.
Day by day, the numbers of this mental health patients are enhancing and in order to manage
the condition, along with the pharmacological therapy various other behavioural therapies are
also offered to the patients for better health outcome. The most common behavioural
therapies for the mental health disorder are cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), Dialectal
behavioural therapy (DBT), motivational interviewing (Romano & Peters, 2015).
In this essay, the idea of CBT is discussed in a brief manner along with its
effectiveness among the mental health patients.
Discussion
Cognitive behavioural therapy or CBT is a goal oriented short term psychological
therapy that aims to change the pattern of thinking of the individuals suffering from different
types of mental health disorders. It is mainly interactive therapy through which the therapist
wants to know about the distressed feeling of the individuals and in some cases, it was
reported that the use of this therapy is more effective than that of the conventional treatment
process. Furthermore, it is reported that this therapy aims to remove or minimize the negative
thoughts of an individual during the therapy sessions in order to make the patient feel better
(Battagliese et al., 2015).
As per the information of NHS, it can be reported that the CBT can change the way of
thinking and behaviour of the individuals through the process of detail interaction. Therefore,
this therapy is mostly used in treatment of anxiety and depression; however, in case of other
mental health disorder, CBT can be used by the mental health practitioners. For example, it

2COGNITIVE BEHAVIOURAL THERAPY
can be stated that CBT can be used in the treatment of bipolar disorder, borderline personality
disorder, schizophrenia, panic disorder, insomnia, phobia related problems (NHS, 2020).
During a CBT session, the patient may have to attend the session once a week or once per 2
week time period. The course of the treatment process generally lasts for 5- 20 sessions with
30- 60 minutes in each of the session. During the sessions, the patient will work with the
therapist to break down his or her problems related to his feelings, thoughts, behaviour and
actions in order to analyse them properly. After that the therapist will work on those findings
and should suggest the patients how he or she can overcome this condition and the patient
should practice those changes in his or her activities of daily life to change the thoughts and
behaviour towards positivity (Stallard, 2019).
Mostly the CBT is used to treat depression and anxiety in the clinical care setting and
in various studies, the effectiveness of this therapy is well established. According to the study
of Towmey, O’Reilly and Byrne (2015) it was reported that use of CBT in treating depression
and anxiety was very effective. In this meta-analysis study almost 29 RCT studies were
included and study result showed that the use of multi-modal CBT was more effective than
that of the no primary care treatment and primary care treatment as usual (TAU) in treating
depression and anxiety. Moreover, it was also reported that the combination of multi-modal
CBT and primary care TAU was more effective in depression than primary care TAU. The
study of Wiles et al. (2016) presented different insights towards the effectiveness of the CBT
in the clinical care setting. In this context, it can be stated that this study focused on the
economic effectiveness of CBT and study findings reported that the use of CBT was cost
effective compared to usual care process that was use of antidepressant in case of long term
care process and this process had the cost of £343 per year per patients. In another study by
Oud et al. (2019), the effectiveness of CBT was shown in case of treating children and
adolescents. In this study almost 4335 patients were included from the 31 trials. The study

3COGNITIVE BEHAVIOURAL THERAPY
result showed that the CBT was capable of preventing depressive symptoms by almost 63 per
cent on the follow up cases. Moreover, it was found that a mixture of challenging thoughts
component and behavioural activation in the treatment process along with the incorporation
of the caregivers was associated with the better treatment outcome among the children and
adolescence. The study findings were also supported by the study findings of Nardi et al.
(2017). In this systematic review study, it was reported that the use of individual or group
CBT was able to improve the depressive symptoms among the patients compared to the
control groups. However, the study also reported about the effectiveness of social support
along with CBT among the adolescents in reducing the depressive symptoms. The study of
Ashworth et al. (2015) reported about the effectiveness of the CBT among the patients
suffering from Insomnia and depression. The study aimed to examine the effectiveness of the
CBT-I delivered by a therapist and self-help CBT-I (written instructions) and almost 41
patients with the above said problems were recruited as study sample. All the patients were
randomized to each of the group for 4 sessions. The study result showed that CBT-I directed
by a therapist made noteworthy reductions in both insomnia and depression than that of the
self-help CBT-I and hence it was concluded that this should be considered as a treatment
method for insomnia. The study findings were quite similar with the study results of Ballesio
et al. (2018). This meta-analysis study also reported about the effective nature of CBT in
reducing the issue of insomnia among the patients compared to the control group patients
Conclusion
Hence, it can be concluded that the application of the CBT in the treatment of anxiety
and depression is very effective in nature. However, it is reported that the combination
therapy of CBT and traditional treatment process is more effective in nature. The use of CBT
is also cost effective compared to usual care process that is use of antidepressant and it can
also be used in treatment of insomnia.

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References
Ashworth, D. K., Sletten, T. L., Junge, M., Simpson, K., Clarke, D., Cunnington, D., &
Rajaratnam, S. M. (2015). A randomized controlled trial of cognitive behavioral therapy
for insomnia: an effective treatment for comorbid insomnia and depression. Journal of
counseling psychology, 62(2), 115.
Ballesio, A., Aquino, M. R. J. V., Feige, B., Johann, A. F., Kyle, S. D., Spiegelhalder, K., ...
& Baglioni, C. (2018). The effectiveness of behavioural and cognitive behavioural
therapies for insomnia on depressive and fatigue symptoms: a systematic review and
network meta-analysis. Sleep medicine reviews, 37, 114-129.
Battagliese, G., Caccetta, M., Luppino, O. I., Baglioni, C., Cardi, V., Mancini, F., &
Buonanno, C. (2015). Cognitive-behavioral therapy for externalizing disorders: A meta-
analysis of treatment effectiveness. Behaviour research and therapy, 75, 60-71.
Nardi, B., Massei, M., Arimatea, E., & Moltedo-Perfetti, A. (2017). Effectiveness of group
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NHS (2020). Overview: Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). NHS. Retrieved from-
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/cognitive-behavioural-therapy-cbt/ [Accessed on 31st
March 2020]
Oud, M., De Winter, L., Vermeulen-Smit, E., Bodden, D., Nauta, M., Stone, L., ... & Engels,
R. (2019). Effectiveness of CBT for children and adolescents with depression: a
systematic review and meta-regression analysis. European Psychiatry, 57, 33-45.

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Romano, M., & Peters, L. (2015). Evaluating the mechanisms of change in motivational
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Stallard, P. (2019). Think Good, Feel Good: A cognitive behavioural therapy workbook for
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