COGNITIVE BEHAVIOUR THERAPY

Effects of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy for Depression in Older Adults

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Effects of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy for Depression in Older Adults

Thesis Statement

Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) is an innovative kind of therapy for healing depression and its effects have been successful in older adults.

Introduction

The problems of anxiety and depression are common psychological health problems in most of the older adults which most of time go undetected due to a number of differing presentations in older adults, high comorbidity, and assumptions that organic rather than psychological conditions account for diagnosis indicators such as problems with sleep, fatigue, any kind of inactivity or agitation. Depression is characterized by sadness, feelings of worthlessness and any kind of guilt, lethargy, some disturbances due to sleep and appetite and loss of interest in activities. Major kinds of depression occur in 1-6 percent of community-dwelling older adults, 10-15 percent medically ill or frail kinds of individuals and 30 percent of individuals with dementia. While an additional 9-30 percent of community-dwelling older adults report sub-threshold symptoms that also significantly impact quality of life (Agronin & Maletta 2005, pp. 359-360). The most common kind of anxiety Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) occurs in approximately 3-17 percent of adults and is characterised by worry, with sub-threshold anxiety symptoms occurring for an additional 15-43 percent healthy older adults. Cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) is an innovative kind of therapy for healing depression but it also empowers skills and help patients to control their thoughts instead of allowing certain kinds of thoughts control them (Dnet 2012, n.p.).

Protocol

Cognitive behaviour therapy is an empirically supported intervention for both anxiety and depression for older patients with evidence for the effectiveness of individually administered and also group based cognitive behaviour therapy. The process of cognitive behaviour therapy generally involved education about any kind of depression or any kind of anxiety, self-monitoring of negative or anxious thoughts and states of emotions, replacement of dysfunctional beliefs and self-statement of functional ones, scheduling of pleasant events and skills training for instance problem solving and relaxation. There have been several developments and modification to cognitive behaviour therapy for the sake it especially suitable for older adults including altered use of homework (Fisher, Piazza & Roane 2011, pp. 474). While at the same time several recent studies have also illustrated the benefits of cognitive behaviour therapy over therapeutic control groups, nonspecific therapies and desipramine. Researchers have revealed that cognitive behaviour therapy helps patients by providing them effective relief from any kind of anxiety, depression and other sort of behavioural issues and problems and also helps them finding their identity (CBT Australia 2012, n.p.).

Results

The articles to be incorporated in this study have been selected on the basis that each one depicts its own significance and importance in terms of their results on the under discussion topic. For instance, the first article includes a detailed feasibility study on the impact of individual cognitive behavioural therapy on anxiety and depression along with obstructive pulmonary disease in older adults by Lightner Eileen of ...