Is there too much emphasis on the behavioural side of CBT?

[Ashley]

Just to take the discussion slightly off topic. Technically CBT is also considered a 'talking therapy'... although as that great article we published in the magazine last year pointed out, we should actually also think of CBT as a 'doing therapy'.

[Angst]

Yes it is considered a talking therapy mainly to distinguish psychological interventions from biochemical interventions.

[PolarBear]

On 22/07/2019 at 08:06, Ashley said:

 

I don't think anybody did suggest OCD treatment was just about cognitive therapy.  I don't want to put words into BelaAnna's mount (or forum typing fingers) but the point was that here in the UK the NHS do NOT recommend behavioural therapy on its own (or ERP) or cognitive for that.  It recommends up to 10 hours of CBT (with ERP). But all too frequently I am seeing people present to therapists (mainly IAPT) who are told that overcoming OCD is about writing a few worry diaries and facing your fears.

Simply stating facing your fears to overcome OCD is not how we treat OCD and should not be the focus of therapy.

As Dr Bream wrote, CBT makes use of two evidence-based behaviour techniques, Cognitive Therapy (C) that looks at how we think, and Behaviour Therapy (B) which looks at how this affects what we do.  In treatment we consider other ways of thinking (C), and how this would affect the way we behave (B)…. 

It's all linked. So it's not unreasonable for a patient to expect to be offered the full recommended treatment of both parts, C and B if that's what they want, in fact they shouldn't even have to push for it.  The NICE guidelines are pretty clear that we recommend CBT.

Doing one without the other is only half the job.  In my opinion, based of years of anecdotal evidence on here and the phone lines by only doing the behavioural we're most likely leaving ourselves open to relapsing or OCD shape shifting.

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

I completely agree.