Aaron T. Beck

Aaron T. Beck 

 

Aaron T. Beck was born on July 18, 1921, in Rhode Island. He graduated from Brown University in 1942 and was an exemplary student, achieving magna cum laude and earning the William Gaston Prize for Excellence in Oratory and the Francis Wayland Scholarship. He continued his studies at Yale Medical School and earned his medical degree from there in 1946. Beck spent most of his career studying psychoanalysis, and in the 1960’s, began exploring other therapeutic techniques. While at the University of Pennsylvania, Beck struggled to find a way to help his depressed clients better capture their emotions. He realized that many of his depressed clients experienced recurring negative thoughts and that as long as they believed these thoughts to be true, they would continue to have symptoms of depression. He theorized that in order to change the symptoms, he must change their distorted thinking. This belief led to the development of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. In an effort to better gauge the symptoms of depressed individuals, he initially conducted research into the psychoanalytic theories of depression. He developed a different theoretical-clinical approach that he labeled cognitive therapy. Since 1959 he has directed funded research investigations of the psychopathology of depression, suicide, anxiety disorders, panic disorders, alcoholism, drug abuse, personality disorders, and schizophrenia and of cognitive therapy of these disorders. His current work focuses on disseminating empirically tested cognitive therapy treatments into community settings to investigate the efficacy and effectiveness of these therapies when implemented in real-world settings. He has developed the Beck Initiative, an innovative collaborative relationship with the City of Philadelphia's Department of Mental Health/Mental Retardation Services to train community therapists to conduct cognitive therapy. In addition, he is investigating cognitive therapy treatment for schizophrenia. He has been listed as one of the “10 individuals who shaped the face of American Psychiatry” and the most influential psychotherapist among American psychologists. 

Cognitive Triad Therapy: It is a triad of types of negative thought present in depression proposed by Aaron Beck. 

The triad involves negative thoughts about

1. The self (i.e., self is worthless)
2. The world/environment (i.e., world is unfair)
3. The future (i.e., future is hopeless)

Beck's negative triad holds that depressed people have negative thoughts about themselves, their experiences in the world, and the future.  For instance, a depressed person might think, "I didn't get the job because I'm terrible at interviews. Interviewers never like me, and no one will ever want to hire me." In the same situation, a person who is not depressed might think, "The interviewer wasn't paying much attention to me. Maybe she already had someone else in mind for the job. Next time I'll have better luck, and I'll get a job soon." Beck also identified the following cognitive distortions, which can contribute to depression: arbitrary inference, selective abstraction, overgeneralization, magnification and minimization^.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a psychotherapeutic approach that addresses dysfunctional emotions, behaviors, and cognitions through a goal-oriented, systematic process. The name refers to behavior therapy, cognitive therapy, and to therapy based upon a combination of basic behavioral and cognitive research. CBT is effective for the treatment of a variety of conditions, including mood, anxiety, personality, eating, substance abuse, tic, and psychotic disorders. Many CBT treatment programs for specific disorders have been evaluated for efficacy; the health-care trend of evidence-based treatment, where specific treatments for symptom-based diagnoses are recommended, has favored CBT over other approaches such as psychodynamic treatments.

Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), is a form of psychotherapy in which the therapist and the client work together as a team to identify and solve problems. Therapists use the Cognitive Model to help clients overcome their difficulties by changing their thinking, behavior, and emotional responses. Cognitive therapy has been found to be effective in more than 1000 outcome studies for a myriad of psychiatric disorders, including depression, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, and substance abuse, among others, and it is currently being tested for personality disorders. It has also been demonstrated to be effective as an adjunctive treatment to medication for serious mental disorders such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Cognitive therapy has been extended to and studied for adolescents and children, couples, and families. Its efficacy has also been established in the treatment of certain medical disorders, such as irritable bowel syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome, hypertension, fibromyalgia, post-myocardial infarction depression, noncardiac chest pain, cancer, diabetes, migraine, and other chronic pain disorders.