Cognitive Behaviorial Therapy Essay, Research Paper

Cognitive Behaviourial Therapy

Cognitive behaviourial therapy is used to treat and prevent depressive disorders. The title of this article is basically self explanatory, Cognitive Therapy with an Adolescent to Prevent Relapse of Psychotic Disorder. Writers Dr. Sally Beeken and Dr. Kedar Dwivedi used cognitive therapy techniques over a six month period in order to prevent relapses of psychosis for a 14 year old girl.

The 14 year old girl seemed to be a stable child. She had a nuclear family, was a high achiever at school, conscientious, bright, and popular. Because of her normality she was given blood tests, an EEG, And an MRI to investigate an organic cause for her psychosis, but all of the tests were normal. As far as her psychotic episodes she had three in a one year period. Her episodes were characterize by restlessness, disinhibition, thought disorder, delusions, visual and auditory hallucinations, and mood swings. Each of her episodes was short and resolved. After her third episode she began to take a medication called Carbamazepine, and began cognitive therapy sessions.

Knowing that cognitive therapy is well suited to work with adolescents because it is non- confrontational the therapists began sessions. First an agenda was always shared between patient and therapist which included news, homework, tasks, business, and plans. To create a relaxed environment humor was used to examine distressing material. After this proceeded three stages. In the first stage they examined events of each episode including her thoughts and feelings. In the second the examined the thinking errors and how they might have caused the psychotic episode. In the third the therapist considered the time line of events produced by the patient. Her delusional beliefs were examined and evidence for and against each delusion was made;

Melanie Feldman

sometimes the evidence lead to alternative explanations for her experiences. During the examination of events it became clear that her episodes were followed by sleeplessness and anxiety. They then attempted to understand her state of mind to establish her faulty thinking. By sharing their everyday thinking errors therapist and patient were then able to use this exercise on her delusional beliefs. It then became possible for her to question her thinking at the time and normalize her psychotic thinking.

The Authors concluded that cognitive therapy of psychosis proves that a delusions are non-understandable. In the therapy as described above it is ultimately possible for the patient to understand the events during the psychotic episode. The patient feels safe to examine their deeply disturbing thoughts. They hope that the 14 year old girl with her period of therapy and the help of her medication she will be able to recognize the events before a relapse and have the ability to work cognitively and examine its manifestations. Thus making the symptoms powerless so she can remain in control.

From the evidence in this paper it seems as if this cognitive therapy could work. The only thing missing is what happened to the girl after her therapy. Did she relapse into another episode? All it says is that the doctors can hope that she will rationalize the situation and control it. This method looks to follow a positive and helpful method for the teen. I believe that this article would have been more interesting if the authors provided the reader with more information. It gives a good analysis of cognitive therapy but I believe it could have been explained better. The article was interesting but at the same time seemed to need more information.