Cognitive Therapy Praised by Mental Health Worker
23rd October 2003
| |  |  | Therapist Mary Douglas champions the treatment | | Video files are available. Download the latest Quicktime plug-in to view them. |
Local therapist Mary Douglas today championed the use of cognitive
therapy in the treatment of depression. Cognitive therapy is a talking
therapy designed to ease distress from emotional problems. Douglas herself
suffered heavily from depression when she was a university physics student
but recovered following an intensive course of cognitive therapy treatment.
“After I got better, I switched from physics to neurology and
then trained as an analyst. Now I work as a therapist in an adolescent
psychiatric unit, helping young people get through such a disabling
and debilitating illness.
I found that cognitive therapy really helped me to get through my depression.
It’s a way of helping people to cope with anxiety, stress and
emotional problems. It’s all about learning to tune into that
“running commentary” we have inside our heads. Patients
are given a kind of diary of fill in. I ask them to jot down what’s
going on day by day- pleasant situations, stressful situations and how
they felt at the time. Then we discuss these situations in detail and
I ask the patient to consider whether their ways of thinking are realistic
or not. They can then learn to change these ways of thinking to more
helpful ones.
Cognitive therapy is a way of talking about the connections between
how we behave and how we think and feel. It particularly concentrates
on ideas that are unrealistic. These ideas often undermine our self-confidence
and make us feel depressed or anxious.”
Douglas is to give a talk on cognitive therapy and the benefits of its
use in the treatment of mental illness and most especially depression
next Tuesday at Red Town University Psychology Department at 7.30 pm.
All are welcome.
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