Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) addresses dysfunctional emotions, maladaptive behaviors, and cognitive processes. This is an effective treatment for patients who are dealing with anxiety and depression. CBT refers to a group of psychotherapies that incorporate techniques from cognitive therapy and behavior therapy. Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck are the two psychologists who came up with therapies. Beck developed the cognitive therapy (CT) that focuses on changing the client’s unrealistic maladaptive beliefs and thoughts in order to change the individual’s behavior and emotional state. To help CT is directive collaboration by help teach the client correct their distorted thinking and perception of self,

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a mixture of both Cognitive Therapy (CT), which deals with a person’s thoughts and Behavioral Therapy (BT), which concentrates on an individual’s overt or outside personality. According to Barbara P. Early and Melissa D. Grady, CT specializes in the mental process that can affect an individual’s feelings and behavior, while BT is focusing on the external environment that can cause the behaviors, such as a stimulus (Early & Grady, 2016). The use of the two therapies together allows the

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in contrast to many other therapeutic frameworks has both an explicit rationale and an empirically demonstrable success rate. In addition to the wealth of published case histories there are a plethora of controlled studies attesting to the efficacy of CBT interventions with an equally diverse range of psychological and behavioral conditions. (Emmelkamp et al 1992).

The way the criminal justice system should handle crimes has always been a debated subject. For over the last forty years, ever since the war on drugs, there are more policies made to be “tough on crime”. From then, correctional systems have grown and as people are doing more crimes, there are plenty of punishments for them. In the mid 1970’s, rehabilitation was the main concern for the criminal justice system. It was common that when someone was convicted of a crime, they would be sentenced to prison but there would also be diagnosed treatments to help them as well. Most likely, they would have committed a crime due to psychological problems. When they receive treatment in prison, they can be healed and would not go back to their wrong lifestyle they had lived before. As years have gone by, people thought that it was better to take a more punitive stance in the criminal justice system. As a result of the turnaround of this more punitive criminal justice system, the United States now has more than 2 million people in prisons or jails--the equivalent of one in every 142 U.S. residents--and another four to five million people on probation or parole. The U.S. has a higher percentage of the

The current prison and criminal justice system has not proven to be helpful in rehabilitating offenders and preventing recidivism. To successfully alter this situation it is important to understand what steps and measures are available to assist those who find themselves imprisoned. The techniques used in cognitive behavioral therapy have proven to be effective in treating depression, anxiety and drug addictions among other things. Analyzing the techniques developed in cognitive behavioral theory and applying them to psychotherapy in prison environments can assist in making improvements in the prevention of criminal activity, rates of incarceration and safety and security of the general population. The literature shows that the use of

Cognitive behavioral; therapy (CBT) was developed as an aide to prevent relapse when treating addiction. CBT is based on the principle that the learning process is important in dealing with male adaptive behaviors like

Corrective thinking helps individuals recognize their criminal thinking and develop more responsible thinking habits. In order for this approach to be successful, the offender must recognize the errors in his/her thinking, see it is a problem, and then learn and apply new ways of thinking. By focusing on and re-working the old thinking patterns, criminal behavior can be eliminated. Corrective thinking is a cognitive reconstruction method. The idea is that “thoughts determine feelings, which in turn influence choices that determine behavior” (Bye & Schillinger, 2005). Bye (2005) cited a study that concluded using Corrective Thinking models with offenders reduces recidivism by 74% in the three to 15 years after completion of the program. Bye and Shillinger’s (2005) study also determined that the Corrective Thinking Program had a positive impact on the participants and resulted in responsible levels of thinking. None of the participants in the intervention group were arrested while enrolled in training, however, many control group participants had been arrested (Bye & Shillinger, 2005). In order to reduce recidivism, there are many aspects to criminal thinking that must be changed, which is what the Criminal Thinking Program works to address. These programs place an emphasis on the following aspects; new communication patterns, developing close and

Behavioral techniques utilized by CBT are designed not only to change certain behaviors, but also to elicit the individual's cognitions associated with specific behaviors.

In it's simplest form, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, (or CBT as it will be referred to from here on out), refers to the approach of changing dysfunctional behaviors and thoughts to realistic and healthy ones. CBT encompasses several types of therapy focusing on the impact of an individual's thinking as it relates to expressed behaviors. Such models include rational emotive therapy (RET), rational emotive behavioral therapy (REBT), behavior therapy (BT), Rational Behavior Therapy (RBT), Schema Focused Therapy, Cognitive therapy (CT). Most recently a few other variations have been linked to CBT such as acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), dialectic behavioral therapy (DBT), and

Cognitive behavior therapy programs operate with some common assumptions. Problematic behavior is mostly rooted in the ways of thinking that promote and support such behavior. For example, take a look at a person who has stolen property all his life. Due to that offenders corrupted thought process, he believes that the only way to obtain property is to take it with no one knowing or by force without any sort of regards to consequences. To change this problematic behavior one must change his or her beliefs, attitudes and modify the ways of thinking. Punitive methods of controlling behavior all too often reinforce modes of thinking that were responsible for the initial anti-social behavior (Gornik 2002). Authority helps to pinpoint rules and assists in reinforcing consequences while reminding and encouraging offenders to make their own decisions. As offenders learn to make conscious and deliberate life choices, they began to take

Lastly, but not least is CBT. It combines the elements of cognitive and behavioral treatments in addressing psychological problems and abnormal behavior, in this case sexual offenders. The Good Lives Model-Comprehensive (Ward & Gannon, 2006) is a good representitive for CBT, as it combines the original Good Lives Model of Offender rehabilitation and the Integrated Theory of Sexual Offending. Both of which have been the prior use to helping sexual offenders. However, not all of these treatments are effective and have limitations. (Maletzky & Steinhauser, 2002) conducted a 25 year follow up on 7275 sexual offenders who were in a CBT. The results show the treatment generated long-lasting, positive results by reducing recidivism and risk to the community. Now that the types of treatments have been explained, the next section goes into the existing literature of those treatments on sexual offenders and what’s the best/worst.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) was developed as a method to prevent relapse when treating people with alcohol problems and then later it was adapted for drug-addicted individuals. Cognitive behavioral strategies are based on the theory that in the development of maladaptive behavioral patterns.

CBT is an integrated approach using various combinations of cognitive and behavioral modification interventions and techniques (Myers, 2005). The aim is to change maladaptive patterns of thinking and behaving that impact clients in the present (Weiten et al., 2009). From a cognitive behavioral perspective Jane would be diagnosed as having faulty thinking and dysfunctional behavioral issues suffering from depression, and anxiety in the form of Agoraphobia (Weiten et al., 2009).

Today Cognitive behavioral Therapy has been influenced by two major therapeutic approaches: firstly, Behaviorism as developed by Skinner, Pavlov and others in the 1950s and 1960s, where the main research was related to rewards and punishments, or stimuli’ and their response. Second is Cognitive therapy which was introduced or made popular by Beck and Ellis in the 1960s. CBT by definition is a form of treatment that focuses on examining the relationships between thoughts, feelings and behaviors. By exploring the patterns of thinking that lead to negative actions and the beliefs that dictate these thoughts, families can identify and change the patterns in order to