Reviews

Cognitive behaviour therapy

Many doctors are sceptical about cognitive behaviour therapy, the subject of several articles in this week's BMJ (p 288). Nevertheless, more and more research is showing it to have increasingly more use in clinical practice.

What if, as a medical practitioner, you want to be able to offer your patients cognitive behaviour therapy as a treatment? A good place to start, for your patient and possibly yourself, is with an explanation of what it is. A great step by step description can be found on Mind's website (www.mind.org.uk/information/factsheets/C/Cognitive_Behaviour_Therapy.asp).

The British Association of Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies (www.babcp.org.uk) also publishes a range of leaflets, explaining conditions that can be helped and how they can be improved by behavioural therapy. There are currently 16 leaflets in print with problems ranging from schizophrenia to sexual dysfunction. The site also has an excellent links page.

If you want actually to offer cognitive behaviour therapy to your patients then there are two options. You can provide it yourself or you can refer patients on to a specialist. If you choose the latter then it may be worth visiting the home page of the British Psychological Society (www.bps.org.uk), where you can find searchable registers of psychotherapists within the United Kingdom.

For doctors who want to provide cognitive behaviour therapy themselves, there are a number of internationally recognised qualifications available from various organisations worldwide. One place, reputedly used by the Maudsley Hospital in London for training staff, is the Auckland Institute of Cognitive and Behaviour Therapies (www.aicbt.co.nz).

Navin Chohan. 

BMJ nchohan{at}bmj.com