Cognitive Therapy

Cognitive therapy (CT) is a kind of psychotherapy that treats problematic behaviors and distressing emotional responses by identifying and correcting unhelpful and inaccurate patterns of thinking. It involves the individual working with a therapist to test and change unhelpful beliefs, identify distorted thinking, relate to others differently, and change behavior. The approach rests on the cognitive model, which holds that thoughts, feelings and behavior are interconnected, and it draws on the heuristics and biases research of the 1970s that identified cognitive biases and distortions contributing to mental illness. Aaron Beck developed cognitive therapy as a distinct approach that later informed the broader cognitive behavioral therapy tradition.