At the Centre of Psychological Therapies, our aim is to help children and young adults (up to 26 years) improve their mental health and we do this by offering a time limited course of evidence-based psychological therapies What is CBT? Psychological therapies are sometimes referred to as 'talking therapies'. Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is a talking therapy that can help you manage your problems by developing new ways to think and behave. CBT works with the concept that a person’s thoughts, feelings, physical sensations and behaviours are interconnected. CBT can help you manage how problems are impacting you in the here-and-now. Together with a therapist you will explore these patterns to improve the way you feel. Therapy will focus on challenging negative thoughts, dealing with emotions, and finding helpful coping strategies. Information for young people Dealing with challenges is part of day-to-day life. Most of the time you are able to problem solve and sort these out. However sometimes problems might stick around for much longer and no matter how hard you try; the problem seems hard to solve. Sometimes when problems have been around for a while they start to impact more and more on a person’s life and they may feel like they are beginning to takeover, which can have an effect how you think, feel and react. Understandably people tend not to enjoy situations which make them feel anxious, scared, angry or sad. You may have already found some ways of managing that help in the short term, eg. avoiding things, spend more time on your own, but in the long term these may be making you feel worse. CBT has been shown to be a helpful talking therapy for young people and adults who are experiencing different problems with their mental health. Some examples of problems that CBT can help improve are: Stress, panic and anxiety Low mood or depression Some sleep problems Understanding and managing emotions, e.g. anger Social worries and relationship challenges other issues, such as OCD and phobias How does CBT work? CBT helps you find ways to understand your thoughts and feelings and highlight how these are linked to what you do. CBT helps people develop more helpful ways of thinking, explores how to manage unpleasant feelings and supports your development of helpful coping strategies, by being able to face and overcome the problem. What happens in a typical CBT session? CBT sessions are usually around 50 minutes long. Therapy will be weekly and depending on your therapy goals, will last around 12 sessions (this could be slightly more or less). Sessions can be in person or online, we will check what suits you best. CBT sessions are collaborative, meaning you and your therapist will work together. Sessions will look different depending on your age and what works best for you. Some clients may prefer use of visual worksheets or play, other clients may be comfortable with predominantly discussion based sessions. Each week you will be given practice tasks linked to your therapy session. These will be discussed in your follow-up sessions. There is lots of evidence to suggest CBT clients who engage in these tasks make most progress with the personal goals they set for therapy. Information for families/carers Can younger children have therapy? CBT has been shown to be an effective treatment for children and adolescents with anxiety and mood disorders. It is important to consider the developmental stage of the young person requesting support. As part of our initial assessment appointment, we will carefully consider whether the young person will be able to access CBT, and if so, what supports from those caring for the young person are required. We are unlikely to work with children under the age of 7, as developmentally they are unlikely to manage some of the tasks required for this type of therapy. What will my role be? Depending on the age of the young person attending, those caring for young people may attend some or all of the initial assessment session. Once the young person starts CBT therapy, involvement will be assessed on an individual basis, depending on the age of the young person and in line with the permission of the client. Generally, involvement will fall into 3 broad categories: Facilitator - agree to support young person attending, eg. liaise with school regarding appointments/time away from school, lifts to therapy, but may not attend sessions. Join a small number of sessions - this may be with young person, or separate parent sessions, with the aim of sharing relevant and helpful assessment and therapy information. Co-therapist – the person with caring responsibility will attend some or all sessions or aspects of a session (eg. start and end of a session), to facilitate home tasks (carers may have some too), recording challenges and successes, providing support and reassurance. We know some young people may struggle to apply learning from therapy in the real world without an adult helper, so this input can be key. Will I receive feedback? Once the young person starts therapy, involvement will be assessed on an individual basis, depending on the age of the young person and in line with the permission of the client. Information for external professional services How to access CPT: We are a self referral service and we ask that the family/carer/young person contacts us directly at CPT@ed.ac.uk. Following this, CPT will reply via email with current waitlist times and a link to an online form. An initial appointment is then offered to assess whether the Centre can meet the needs of the individual. Initial appointments are carried out by qualified clinicians alongside therapists in training. If you have any questions about a possible referral, please email CPT@ed.ac.uk.
