Fortnightly review: Cognitive behaviour therapy clinical applications

Although there are many variants of cognitive behaviour therapy, these are unified by the proposition that psychological problems arise as a direct consequence of faulty patterns of thinking and behaviour.Patients tend to misinterpret situations or symptoms in ways that undermine their coping.Their abnormal behavioural patterns exacerbate and consolidate these problems.The critical factor lies in how patients assess specific situations or problems-as summarised by Epictetus, a first century Greek philosopher: "Men are disturbed not by things, but the views they take of them." 1 MethodsThis review of cognitive behaviour therapy is based on a literature search of all papers, books, and chapters related to its application in mental health and general medicine.In the search I used the following key words-cognitive, behaviour, behavioural, theory, therapy, treatment-and searched the following databases on the Embase CD ROM from September 1985