Posted by mattdds on March 3, 2003, at 7:58:23
In reply to cognitive therapy, posted by Kevin Davis on March 2, 2003, at 19:13:33
Kevin,
CBT is great, but it requires a lot of work on your part. I got about 80% of my relief from anxiety and nearly all of my depression from CBT. Certainly, the behavioral aspects of both of those disorders were helped tremendously (i.e. I was able to continue functioning at a high-level during bad anxiety thanks to CBT training)
I disagree that it is a waste of time. CBT is becoming the standard of care (according to many) for panic, social anxiety, OCD and depression. It targets specific complaints and upsetting ideas and beliefs, rather than blindly groping around your "childhood" for some possibly related traumatic event, like the older therapies often do.
Also, CBT can change your brain, literally. A commonly used biological marker to show remission of OCD is reduced glucose metabolism in the caudate nucleus. A study done at UCLA in '92 showed that people who responded to CBT showed the same changes in caudate glucose metabolism as those who responded to SSRI therapy. Reference below:
Baxter, L.R., Schwartz, J.M., & Bergman, K.S., et al. Caudate glucose metabolic rate changes with both drug and behavioral therapy for obsessive-compulsive disorders. Archives of General Psychiatry, 49, 681-689
I strongly recommend CBT. It can't hurt and can only help. There are also (presumably) no side effects (others would jokingly say a "pain in the ass", though.), and you can raise the "dose" as high as you want.
CBT is not a panacea, and I'm sure I'll take some flak for posting this, but my experience has been really good.
Keep in mind that CBT and meds need not be mutually exclusive. I take a (very) small dose of Klonopin, which is usually frowned upon by most behavioral idealists. But this is what works for me. Between the CBT and the Klonopin, I consider myself 100% recovered, sometimes perhaps better than before I was ever sick! Also, when I feel myself slipping or getting flare-ups of my old symptoms, they last about an hour now. CBT is great, and well researched, for relapse prevention.
Best of luck,
Matt
poster:mattdds
thread:205352
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20030301/msgs/205470.html