Will Baum, LCSW

A free CBT clinic launches this Sunday at SCCC.  The flyer:

FREE Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) Consultation Clinic

The Southern California Counseling Center
5615 W. Pico Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90019
(323) 937-1344

Come receive a one-time FREE CBT consultation and education from experienced mental health counselors!

CBT is a highly effective type of mental health treatment that helps people who suffer from:

Depression, anxiety disorders (such as panic disorder, social phobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder), low self-esteem, family/marital/relationship problems, grief and loss, and many other issues.

CBT helps people develop hands-on therapeutic skills to improve the quality of their lives. It helps to elevate daily functioning by reducing stress, improving mood, assisting with communication skills, anger management skills and in raising self-esteem.

The CBT Clinic will offer one-time No-Cost Cognitive Behavioral Therapy consultations at the Southern California Counseling Center on the first Sunday of every month starting on:

Sunday, June 6th, 2010 from 2pm to 7pm.

The service is offered on a “first-come-first-serve” basis. No prior appointment is required. Simply come to the Southern California Counseling Center at the above address and sign up for a free consultation session. We hope to see you there.

From NPR: Mental Health Apps: Like A ‘Therapist In Your Pocket’.

[On one app,] [t]hroughout the day at random times, a “mood map” pops up on a user’s cell phone screen. “People drag a little red dot around that screen with their finger to indicate their current mood”…Users also can chart their energy levels, sleep patterns, activities, foods eaten and more, she says.

The client knows best–studies catching up: Flexible Treatment Intervention Associated With Greater Improvement In Anxiety Symptoms (Medical News Today).

A study suggests more C, less B is helpful in early weeks of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy treatment for depression.  Also:

Patients improved more when they collaborated with their therapists about a plan for treatment and followed that plan.  Not surprisingly, patients also showed greater improvement when they were more engaged in the therapy process and were open to suggestions from their therapist.

I post links to potentially helpful worksheets at Therapy Worksheets. Here’s a find from there that warranted double-posting:  A set of free workbooks from the Centre for Clinical Intervention, a CBT-based program in Western Australia.  Available there as of today:

• Back from the Bluez – Coping with Depression
• Keeping Your Balance – Coping with Bipolar Disorder
• Shy No Longer – Coping with Social Anxiety
• Panic Stations – Coping with Panic Attacks
• What? Me Worry!?! – Mastering Anxiety
• Improving Self-Esteem
• Put Off Procrastinating!
• Assert Yourself!
• Perfectionism in Perspective
• Overcoming Disordered Eating

Worth a look.

A doctoral thesis out of Stockholm gives a boost to the growing practice of online therapy.

A study reported at PsychCentral used CBT and bibliotherapy (“read this”) to help reduce binge eating with good results.

[Participants were] asked to read the book Overcoming Binge Eating by Dr. Christopher Fairburn…The book details scientific information about binge eating and then outlines a six-step self-help program using self-monitoring, self-control and problem-solving strategies.

Participants in the study attended eight therapy sessions over the course of 12 weeks in which counselors explained the rationale for cognitive behavioral therapy and helped participants apply the strategies in the book.

Curious about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and its approach to anxiety?  Take a look at this 18-page info and worksheet pack posted by the University of Huddersfield.  Lays it out clearly and simply–might be helpful.  Here’s the complete “Anxiety Self-Help Pack.” (via Therapy Worksheets)

A long review/think piece in the New Yorker about therapy and psychiatry, including the view from Gary Greenberg’s book, Manufacturing Depression: The Secret History of a Modern Disease:

Greenberg basically regards the pathologizing of melancholy and despair, and the invention of pills designed to relieve people of those feelings, as a vast capitalist conspiracy to paste a big smiley face over a world that we have good reason to feel sick about. The aim of the conspiracy is to convince us that it’s all in our heads, or, specifically, in our brains—that our unhappiness is a chemical problem, not an existential one…

More here.

From the L.A. Times:

A mounting pile of research shows that cognitive behavioral therapy can effectively treat anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, bulimia and substance abuse problems. The method has performed as well as antidepressant medication in treating depression in recent studies. What’s more, patients receiving cognitive behavioral therapy have shown less likelihood of relapse than their medicated peers because the therapy teaches them how to handle their disorder.

But U.S. therapists have been reluctant to embrace the technique…