A cognitive approach to understanding and treating anxiety

✍ Scribed by Christine E. Reilly; Leslie Sokol; Andrew C. Butler

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 83 KB
• Volume: 14
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0885-6222
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-1077(199908)14:1+<s16::aid-hup113>3.0.co;2-n

✦ Synopsis

Cognitive therapy is a short-term, problem-solving, educative psychotherapy originally developed in the 1960s by Aaron T. Beck, M.D. for the treatment of depression. Beck and colleagues later adapted the therapy for anxiety. Over the past decade, the ecacy of cognitive therapy has been established empirically for several anxiety disorders and new applications continue to be developed and tested. This paper has three objectives. The ®rst is to provide a brief overview of treatment outcome research on cognitive therapy for several anxiety disorders including panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, social phobia, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The second objective is to present Beck's cognitive theory of anxiety and the cognitive models used to explain various anxiety disorders. The third and ®nal objective is to outline the treatment strategies that are commonly used in cognitive therapy for anxiety.