Talk:Cognitive behavioral therapy

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 17 January 2024 and 24 April 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Cbrads2 (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Llj2.

— Assignment last updated by Llj2 (talk) 00:56, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

In the literature CBT can refer to a merger of Aaron Beck's CT and Ellis' REBT, but it can also refer to a set of Cognitive and Behavioural Therapies (also CBT). This include Cognitive Therapy, Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Schema Therapy, Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). Then there are variation like TF-CBT which also comes under the Cognitive and Behavioural Therapies umbrella term. Behavioral Therapy which emphasizes changing behaviors through techniques like exposure therapy, systematic desensitization, and skills training to address specific problems or challenges, is an approach on its own but also used elsewhere. I don't think the current article makes it clear. It is also not clear on the disambiguation page. I tend to distinguish "Cognitive Behaviour Therapy" (CBT) from "Cognitive and Behavioural therapies" (the umbrella term) or "C/BT", such as in this paper reviewing Internet-based cognitive and behavioural therapies (I-C/BT). This distinction is probably more important to researcher such as those in behavioural neuroscience. But it would also help in the article to distinguish between the two different uses in this article and the relevant disambiguation page. --Notgain (talk) 10:02, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

I flagged this a couple years ago but got no response Talk:CBT#Cognitive_behaviour_therapy_or_Cognitive_behaviour_therapies?.Maybe this is just a thing in the behavioural neuroscience school. Keen to get your input. --Notgain (talk) 10:24, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

The first paragraph currently states that CBT is one of the "most effective" treatments for substance use. The reference links to a website that is not a reliable source (I added the cn tags). This needs a reference or should be adjusted / or removed. The last paragraph in the lead current says, "When compared to psychoactive medications, review studies have found CBT alone to be as effective for treating less severe forms of... substance use disorders... " There are several other disorders listed but none of the references are for substance use disorders. So, I suggest a reliable source be added or this statement be adjusted accordingly. I've added a citation needed tag. Then in the section on "Substance use disorders" it says, CBT is "one of the most effective means of treatment for substance abuse and co-occurring mental health disorders." However, a 2019 systematic review doi:10.1002/14651858.CD001088.pub4 found "low-quality evidence of no difference between CBT and standard care" in terms of treatment outcomes. The review found "no difference between CBT and Motivational Interviewing (MI)" for "dual diagnosis" of both severe mental illness and substance misuse. The current evidence does not establish the superiority of CBT's effectiveness over standard care or other psychosocial interventions, such as MI. So this also needed to be adjusted accordingly. I added the disputed-section tags so we can discuss. --Notgain (talk) 12:19, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

a year late, but I fully agree.

There are other sections on this page that claim CBT is 'effective in treating' various conditions, when the sources don't actually demonstrate that. Moubliezpas (talk) 21:47, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

There's a pretty lengthy, detailed, well sourced section on the supposed effectiveness of CBT for treating dementia. But the sources all plainly, specifically refer to treating anxiety and depression in patients with mild dementia and / or mild cognitive impairment.

I propose the whole section (tagged as 'disputed inline' - I'm not confident that's the best tag, if anybody knows a better one please let me know) be deleted. It's currently presented as one of many pathologies that CBT can cure / aid, which isn't borne out by evidence.

The information and sources could be re-written as a paragraph in the 'CBT and anxiety/ depression' section, or possibly a whole new section on CBT's effectiveness in different patient populations or something, but that would be a lot of re-writing for a soft claim made 15 years ago, and not my remit.

As this talk page isn't the busiest, I'll leave this for a while before acting. If anybody has any comments, ideas, anything I might be missing, do let me know - thanks.

Moubliezpas (talk) 22:32, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

Edited to add - reading guidelines, deleting the whole subsection might be a bit too bold. I can move it to a special populations section with a new tag calling for clean up / discussion.

Moubliezpas (talk) 00:33, 14 June 2025 (UTC)

"Critics argue CBT's benefits are overstated, citing small or declining effects, high dropouts, neoliberal influences, and methodological flaws, though it remains widely used and considered safe."

This might need a [citation needed] link on it at best. I am a long time lurker of Wikipedia but I have little knowledge on editing pages or anything of the sort so I do not want to do so myself for fear of messing something up. Mesa339 (talk) 21:07, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

 Done General Ization ^Talk 21:17, 9 December 2025 (UTC)