Cognitive Therapy Basics

In recent years, cognitive behavioral psychotherapy with children and adolescents is receiving an increasing amount of attention. While cognitive behavior therapy with children and adolescents considered as an effective and widely used therapeutic approach, most cognitive behavioral therapists lack skills when it comes to working with parents and other family members. Research shows that most childhood disorders are associated with family problems. Children?s difficulties occur in a familial context and family members play a role in the initiation, maintenance, as well as exacerbation of children?s problems. However, there are few cognitive behavioral approaches to family therapy. This is regrettable for at least two reasons. First, children and adolescents infrequently refer themselves to therapy and typically are brought to therapy by powerful others such as peers, teachers, and institutions. Second, cognitive therapists working with individual youngsters rarely hold enough reinforcers and create a consistent environment to effect generalizable and enduring changes in the family context.

Since the beginning, family therapy has been interested in how interactions between family members can create and maintain problem behavior.  Family therapists are also interested in the circular nature of causality (A influences B influences C influences A). This approach allows therapists to gain an understanding of how the child?s context can create, maintain and change the presenting problem.

Family therapy techniques would be complementary to cognitive behavioral therapies with children, adolescents and their families.