Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: Groups & Families

Running head: COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL THERAPY1
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: Groups & Families
Student Name
College/University Affiliation
COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL THERAPY

2

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: Groups & Families
Therapy is a modern-day cure for stressful life events and situations. Talking is, for many, a critical channel to “vent out” and release much pressure. Therapy has, in response, gone a long way from classic paternal to patient-/client-centered approaches. Counsel-patient/client approaches cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) has come to the fore as one most effective and popular approach of much mental health. A professional mental health counselor might adopt the sub-approaches in CBT as many as patients/clients and individual/group situations are. Indeed, a counselor might change a CBT approach, based on a patient’s/client’s request or not, should a given approach is not shown to deliver outcomes as specified collaboratively within a certain number of sessions. To better understand CBT, a closer examination of some approaches is required. For current purposes, CBT for groups and families are of central interest. Accordingly, this short essay aims to compare CBT for groups and families, analyze the challenges of CBT for groups, and recommend effective strategies in CBT for groups.
CBT for groups and families share one most common feature: managing stressful and challenging mental problems of patients in group settings and interactively. In contrast to a one-on-one CBT session, CBT for groups “makes use of behavioral, cognitive, relational, and group procedures to enhance the coping skills of the participants, and ameliorate relational and intrapersonal problems that patients may be experiencing” (Rose, 1999). Similarly, CBT for families “focuses on the use of principles of behavioral modification (namely, contingency contracting and negotiation strategies) and is designed to change the interactional patterns of family members, as well as the restructuring of distorted beliefs and perceptions that develop as a result of faulty interaction” (Dattilio, 2012). The mental health counselor in each approach can,
COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL THERAPY

3

accordingly, be said to shif...