Cognitive behavioural therapy: treatment for depression
Depression and anxiety affect 19% of the adult British population according to the Office of National Statistics, and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is one of the most effective ways to treat it.
While many sufferers of depression are prescribed antidepressant drugs due to the lower cost, doctors concede that cognitive behavioural therapy is by far the best treatment for depression where anxiety is the root cause of the issue. It concentrates on your thoughts and your behaviour, which are interlinked and can help to fix problems and soothe your emotional state if you take the right course of action or make them worse if you don’t.
A lot of patients that have been offered anti-depressants have sought out CBT on their own to tackle their issues and find the best possible solution to their anxiety or depression.
CBT focuses on helping people face problems that simply overwhelm them by teaching them techniques to break down major problems into smaller parts that they can address and manage. It also teaches techniques to reframe problems, so that people who simply cannot cope with adverse circumstances and potentially stressful situations learn to manage their emotional response in a more effective way and prevent stress turning into a crisis.
It is a practical approach that helps you take the right course of action to improve your state of mind in the present moment and to instil coping tools and mechanisms to ensure you take the right approach every time.
The therapist will delve into your past to understand how you have dealt with stress previously, how you relate to the outside world and how you view yourself. With that information, the therapist can then focus on the particular issues you face right now and help you master the tools to reframe them and work through your problems.
Together, you will analyse your feelings, emotions and behaviour to decide what is helpful and positive and what simply does not serve you, as well as how they affect each other.
Then you’ll move forward, armed with a vast amount of tools to cope with life; most clients find that after 5 – 20 sessions they have a completely different outlook and a much more positive approach to life.
