Does anyone besides me think cognitive behavioral therapy is a load of horseshit?

[Ladyhawk]

I have reasons for thinking so, but after a quick look around the web, it seems I'm in the minority.

I was going to copy / paste a huge-ass paper I wrote, but for now I just want to know if I'm the only one whose bullshit detector went off.

[Tobin S.]

1. Does anything work for you, Ladyhawk?

I think I'd have to read a book or two before I passed judgement. I did read the Wiki article about it and it sounds like something I've experienced in the past in therapy, but I don't know for sure. I never asked the therapist what school of thought she subscribed to regarding therapy and what her training was. Whatever she did, it worked. She got me to change my behavior. The results are 92 pounds lost and a possible new girlfriend. I did all of the heavy lifting. She just pointed out the errors in my ways and lit a fire under my ass.

The reason for the question in the subject line is that I know you've struggled with depression for a long time and that it's bad enough for you to be on disability. Do you take psychiatric medication? I do, and no amount of talk therapy would make me better without those meds. I've heard that there is a small percentage of people who suffer from mental illness that nothing works for. They try and try and don't get any better. Are you one of those people?

[AngryOldDem]

2. I think it depends on how severe your symptoms are.

In most cases, I think, CBT should be combined with some kind of drug therapy. Simply "turning around your thoughts" to make them more "positive" is indeed just "horseshit," as you call it, if there is a deeper, more underlying cause for the depression to begin with, like chemical imbalance. Once medication is started, CBT may have some value in helping break the bad habit of negative thought that can create the vicious cycle that depression most certainly is.

In short, I think it has value, but not as a sole theraputic paradigm (unless you're just having a bad case of the blues or "just one of those days.")

Good luck to you.

[undergroundpanther]

3. I think it's horseshit.

The basic assumption of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is that one's thoughts influence one's emotions and behaviors, and that if negative thoughts are altered, negative emotions and behaviors will be altered, as well.


CBT's earliest originators were behaviorists, Pavlov,(That is the Pavlov's who conditioned responses in dogs to drool by the ring of a bell) Watson, Skinner,(Wrote In Beyond Freedom and Dignity, Skinner put forth the notion that Man had no indwelling personality, nor will, intention, self-determinism or personal responsibility, and that modern concepts of freedom and dignity have to fall away so Man could be intelligently controlled to behave as he should. Despite the fact of the degree of implied human degradation. I think Skinner was a fucking monster he abused his child) and Eysenck, to name a few, who paved the way for the behavioral treatment of mental disorders.

Behavioral therapy is as useful as new age crap like "the secret" is, it was a resounding FAILURE for me.I hated it.Some of us cannot fake it long enough to even begin to look like we "made it".

The book Beyond Freedom and Dignity was written under a grant from the National Institutes of Mental Health (HIMH). This shows first, the relation of the government to behavioral engineering, and second, that even this massive government organization which claims to deal with "mental health" is quite comfortable dealing with theorists who blatantly deny the very existence of a mind and therefore anything "mental". Possible the NIMH should change it's name to something more appropriate, such as the "National Institutes of Human Control and Conditioning" - which would be a more apt name for what they are actually concerned with.
http://www.sntp.net/behaviorism/skinner.htm
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Psychiatry seems nervous about trusting itself to this process. It is 50 years since the first randomised controlled trial in medicine, and doctors in other specialties seem sufficiently comfortable with the method to form research practice consortia and to conduct mega-trials 1 2 that are comparatively immune to the methodological and political hazards that can beset small randomised controlled trials and meta-analyses. 3 4 Why, then, have mega-trials not begun in psychiatry? There are two important reasons: the types of treatment used, and the nature of the endpoints. Psychological treatments can be effective and, in certain disorders, more effective than drugs.
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/319/7209/562

http://psychservices.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/53/5/632-a

Imagine a doctor wearing the traditionally authoritative white coat walking into the local asylum with a baseball bat. He finds a couple of hyperactive patient-residents, clobbers them over the head with the bat and notices that they grow noticeably calmer when unconscious. The company that makes the bats funds the doctor's subsequent research (which of course corroborates the earlier findings) and the bat is marketed to other psychiatrists as a "mood stabilizer."
- Gary C. Marfin from Sugar Land, Texas

[qb]

4. CBT has worked for me. I think there is a difference

between mental illness caused by emotional trauma and that caused by a chemical or physiological problem. It makes sense that CBT would work for the former but maybe not the latter.

[no name no slogan]

5. You get out what you put into it

If you are able to work at it and reason through it, I think it can be helpful. If you are unable to work at it, it will not be helpful.

I've taken CBT at a couple different times: once in the hospital, when I was making an active effort to get well, and once on my own, where I could not focus on it because my brain wasn't in the right place (wrong meds). In the hospital, it helped. Outside of the hospital, it didn't do much good, because I was not ready to work at it.

If your brain is capable of processing the information (and if you are willing to keep an open mind toward it), it can work. Otherwise, it's like anything else.

[EFerrari]

6. I've had some success with CBT. I like it because it's simple

and I can work at it a little at a time. It's manageable and low drama.