Cognitive Behavior Therapy: Child Clinical Applications

Definition

Cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) has become one of the most widely used therapeutic protocols with child, adolescent, and adult populations. The diversity of treatment components emerging from cognitive and behavioral theories makes it somewhat difficult to define CBT as a single entity. In general, this treatment approach combines techniques from cognitive and behavioral principles, unified by the perspective that psychopathology development and maintenance is associated with reciprocal relations between mal-adaptive cognitions, learned behaviors, physiological signals, and emotional responding. This mode of treatment holds that interdependent relationships between cognitions, emotions, and behavior are also central to the eventual efficacy of any CBT procedure. Briefly, CBT may best be summarized as a therapeutic attempt to change undesirable emotions using ...