Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: Best Practice?

When a student learns to become a mental health counselor, he/she has to study many different models of therapy. When I was a student, I remember watching a 1950's study called "The three approaches to Gloria." Gloria was a woman looking for counseling and volunteered to be interviewed by the three dominant therapy models at the time which were: Client-Centered Therapy (1) , Gestalt Therapy (2), and Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy (3). Many therapy models have been developed since the Gloria interviews.

The Medical Model folk have been working diligently to corner the market of mental health. They have funded many studies to show that Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (4) has the cornerstone of effectiveness. They are actively lobbying the government, insurance companies, and managed care to try to demonstrate the need for everyone to be treated with Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy. Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy and its proponents claims of being a superior method indicates a very dubious plan that may be harmful to many consumers.

I will introduce to you many other effective models and approaches to therapy that may be just as well, if not better, suited to meet your needs. Consumer awareness, consumer voice, and appropriate outcome information needs to come to the forefront before we are led into a direction that may be disastrous for many consumers.

Footnotes:
(1) http://world.std.com/~mbr2/cct.html

(2) http://www.aagt.org/html/chapter.HTM

(3) http://www.rebt.org/

(4) http://www.nacbt.org/whatiscbt.htm