What is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy? Maurice Prout

Introduction• Board certified by the American Board of Professional Psychology,

Maurice Prout, PhD, has been a provider of mental health care for more than 40 years. Serving as the faculty liaison for the Military Veteran’s Behavioral Health Certificate, Dr. Maurice Prout received his PhD in psychology from the American University in Washington, D.C., and is trained in cognitive behavioral therapy.

Dysfunctional or negative thinking affects an individual’s behavior, mood, sense of self, and physical state. Effective in helping patients to manage depression, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) assists a person to identify negative patterns of thought, assess the legitimacy of these thoughts, and to cultivate a healthier outlook when trying to understand them. CBT does this by teaching a person to be aware of what they're thinking as they are thinking it, calling into question any destructive patterns in real time. This can have the effect of diffusing the energy of the repetitious thoughts, giving the person more choices as to how they might feel or act in a given situation.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy• As negative behavior or thoughts incline an individual towards

depression, thereby making it highly difficult to escape its downward progression, clinicians practicing cognitive behavioral therapy help patients change their behavioral patterns by teaching them to listen very carefully to the things they are telling themselves. They then learn that they can choose to pay attention to these thoughts, or not, depending on whether the thoughts are constructive or destructive..

CBT is based upon the clinician and patient working together to change negative thinking and also understanding that how a person thinks is more important than why they think the way that they do. Studies demonstrate cognitive behavioral therapy to be helpful in managing mild to moderate depression and effective in treating severe depression when administered in combination with antidepressant medication.