People are searching for various treatments or therapies to overcome their mental health conditions, such as anxiety, depression, and phobias, as well as substance addiction. Today, medication-based programs are more common, but some people seek to reduce their reliance on medication or are looking for additional treatments to supplement their medication regimen.
StoneRidge Centers, an Arizona-based provider of inpatient and outpatient mental health and treatment services, offers Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), two related types of psychotherapy. By talking with their therapist in a structured way, these therapies help patients become aware of inaccurate or negative thinking, helping them get a clearer view of challenging situations and respond to them more effectively. CBT and DBT are among the numerous treatment modalities provided by StoneRidge, and these are available as part of its inpatient and outpatient services.
According to Dr. Mark Collins, StoneRidge Centers' Medical Director and President, CBT is based on Beck's theory of depression, which introduced the negative cognitive triad about self, world, and future. A person with depression has seemingly uncontrollable negative thoughts about those three elements, for example: "I'm worthless" (self), "No one loves me" (world), and "Things will never change" (world). Aaron Beck, the founder of cognitive therapy, found that those three cognitions were consistently present in people with depression, as well as other mental health disorders such as bipolar, psychosis, PTSD, and anxiety.
StoneRidge offers a variation of CBT known as Mind Over Mood CBT, which includes a five-part model encompassing thoughts, mood, behavior, physical reaction, and physical environment. These five aspects overlap with each other, like a Venn diagram. When working with a patient, StoneRidge's therapists look at their negative cognitions and apply the five-part model. According to Dr. Collins, people often get stuck on wanting to change their thoughts, thinking it will be enough to resolve their depression. The five-part model gives patients five different areas where they can intervene. When one can't change their thoughts, they can intervene in their mood, or with their behavior, and so on. One's physical environment has a significant effect on how one thinks, so changing it can help alter one's thought patterns.
"I call Mind Over Mood CBT as our brain's GPS. If we get lost in our emotions, moods, or thoughts, we'll be able to use the five-part model to turn the GPS on and give us a template of how to manage and navigate our feelings," Dr. Collins says. "I always tell people at the beginning of their CBT that, if they're able to do it successfully, it's going to help me keep their medications low or even allow them to come off some of the medications. CBT really is about taking responsibility for their own treatment, and the repetitive application helps train the brain away from impulsive thinking."
CBT is a part of StoneRidge's 90-day Intensive Outpatient program and can be worked on continuously throughout life, making the benefits of this type of therapy long-lasting. Some of the most common benefits of CBT include increased self-esteem, more rational thinking, better emotional regulation, improved communication skills, healthy coping skills, and relapse prevention. On the other hand, DBT is typically prescribed for people who have difficulty managing and regulating their emotions.
Dr. Collins shares that one of StoneRidge's patients had been previously hospitalized multiple times at a high-level mental institution without much improvement in her condition. Within the first four weeks of checking in at StoneRidge and undergoing the CBT program, her condition became much more stable, and she was able to take control of her anxiety.
"CBT is all about repetition because you have to look at these negative cognitions that have been going around in your brain for millions of times, like a feedback circuit that keeps going round and round," Dr. Collins says. "Through CBT, we help patients battle those negative cognitions with positive ones and the five-part model. It takes a lot of work, and some people won't do it. But those who do, after a couple of months, look at me and say, 'Why didn't I do this earlier?' CBT is quite easy to understand, but it's the implementation and the practice that's the difficult part."
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