Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT)

Course overview

Cognitive Behavior Therapy is a 2-hour online continuing education (CE) course that provides clinicians with practical guidance in understanding and using cognitive behavior therapy. The present-day popular psychological therapeutic orientation known as cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) is a hybrid of three historical streams of influence: behavior therapy, cognitive therapy, and rational-emotive therapy. Problematic behaviors addressed during treatment are assumed to have been acquired by learned processes of conditioning or modeling. Those behaviors may be overt (readily observable) and/or covert (such as thinking, feeling, emotional arousal, sexual arousal, expectations, and so on). Advances in CBT have been made on the basis of both research and clinical practice. Importantly, CBT is an approach for which there is ample scientific evidence that the methods that have been developed actually produce change. In this manner, CBT differs from many other forms of psychological treatment. This course describes the developmental trajectory of CBT and outlines its major tenets and techniques, including the sailboat metaphor, the lighthouse metaphor, and goal visualization. This course ends by reviewing a case history, which is published by the American Psychological Association with permission and recommended by the APA Clinical Practice Guideline for the treatment of PTSD. Course #21-54 | 2021 | 34 pages | 15 posttest questions