Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

All in all, cognitive behavioural therapy is an effective intervention useful to treat depression among older individuals. It is successful in treating personality, mood, sleep, post-traumatic stress disorders. Through this therapy, many self-management, communication, planning and decision-making skills are improved among affected depressed individuals. Due to the structured format of CBT, different methods could be altered in providing therapy such as by group, self-help reading books, via computer or internet-based and one-on-one conversation with a healthcare professional. After reviewing several studies, it can be concluded that CBT is most effective when combined with pharmacological treatments because they both work altogether in alleviating …show more content…
Cognitive behavioural therapy is an effective and should continue as a first-line treatment to address depression among older individuals because of its scientific validation and structure. Patients can learn variety of skills to evaluate their own thought patterns and as such, this approach can be successfully applicable to real world situations. Although, CBT involves application of four stages, it can be modified to allow for adaptations to meet patient’s treatment needs. Since late-life depression is costly within older adults age group, cognitive behavioural therapy provides an effective geriatric intervention which improves quality of life by behavioural activation, prevents relapses, and reduces the economic cost of this condition within our healthcare system. Often, frail seniors have negative perceptions, are unaware about process of a psychotherapy and roles of therapist. To address this issue, pace of therapy must be adjusted and certified therapists must be trained for frail elderly patients. All the therapy goals should be modest to allow elderly patient acquire sense of mastery with the treatment since they have cognitive or physical impairments. Therapies based on cognitive-behavioural principles hold much appeal in older adults given their emphasis to relearn essential skills. Future research must investigate the effects of this intervention to improve pain and reduce dysfunctionality related to common comorbid conditions such as dementia, diabetes and stroke gait

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