CBT for Depression and Adherence in Individuals with Chronic Illness Therapist Guide

Annotation The Treatments That Work[Trademark] series offers you the tools you need to help your clients overcome a range of problems, including anxiety, panic, phobias, eating disorders, addictions, and PTSD, and emotional and behavioral aspects of many medical problems as well. Whatever the condition or diagnosis, we have a program for you. The treatment in this guide is for people suffering from depression and living with chronic illness. As a result of their poor health, many individuals who are chronically ill become depressed and fail to maintain steady self-care routines. Using this guide, therapists can help clients with chronic illnesses to develop core skills and techniques that will enable them to take better care of themselves. The program incorporates a unique Life-Steps module that teaches clients strategies for keeping up with their medical regimens, including tips for remembering to take medications, getting to medical appointments on time, and communicating effectively with medical providers

Coping with Chronic Illness

The program outlined in this workbook can help those who suffer from chronic medical conditions take better care of themselves while simultaneously relieving depression. Designed to be used in conjunction with visits to a qualified mental health professional, this workbook teaches strategies for maintaining a medical regimen, including how to set up a reminder system for taking medication, plan for getting to medical appointments on time, and how to communicate effectively with medical providers. It also provides guidance for following the advice of treatment providers, such as adhering to certain lifestyle and dietary recommendations. In addition to these self-care skills, it also provides direction on maximizing quality of life (QOL), including how to re-engage in pleasurable activities and use relaxation techniques and breathing exercises to help cope with stress and discomfort, as well as problem-solving to successfully deal with interpersonal or situational difficulties and change negative thought through adaptive thinking

Coping with Chronic Illness

The treatment outlined in this therapist guide is intended for people suffering from depression and living with chronic illnesses. As a result of their poor health, many individuals who are chronically ill become depressed and fail to maintain steady self-care routines. Using this guide, therapists can help clients with chronic illnesses to develop core skills and techniques that will enable them to take better care of themselves. The program incorporates a unique Life-Steps module that teaches strategies for keeping up with their medical regimens, including tips for remembering to take medications, getting to medical appointments on time, and communicating effectively with medical providers. Based on the principles of CBT, this guide provides therapists with overviews of adherence behaviours for select illnesses including cancer, HIV, diabetes, and hypertension, among others. It covers adherence skills, integrated with cognitive and behavioural strategies for managing depression such as managing pleasurable activities, adaptive thinking, problem-solving, and relaxation training. The guide concludes with suggestions on how clients can manage their illnesses and avoid relapse into behaviours that worsen their medical condition

Adaptive Thinking (Cognitive Restructuring): Part I

Chapter 5 discusses anxiety. This includes a definition of anxiety and its symptoms, as well as methods of how to deal with anxiety and adopt new mental health habits. Self-help resources are presented, including somatic quieting, alongside diaphragmatic breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, guided imagery, therapy or professional counselling, and medication options

A qualitative assessment of barriers and facilitators to achieving behavior goals among obese inner-city adolescents in a weight management program

Purpose: The purpose of this study was (1) to examine the reasons for managing weight, (2) to investigate the barriers and facilitators to achieving behavior goals, and (3) to assess how a behavior coach affects the goal-setting process of obese inner-city adolescents in a weight management program.Methods: Obese adolescents participating in a pilot study assessing the role of a behavior coach on successful weight management (n = 18) were interviewed to identify barriers and facilitators to reaching behavior goals. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and the constant comparative method of qualitative analysis.Results: In the rationale for weight control, adolescent girls and boys reported a desire to improve physical appearance and physical conditioning, respectively. Barriers to reaching physical activity goals among girls included unsafe neighborhoods and a negative body image. Maintaining unrealistic behavior and weight goals hindered satisfaction with behavior change and weight loss in both genders. Overall, coaching provided support that helped the obese teens feel more successful in the goal-setting process and address issues related to their disruptive environments.Conclusions: Diabetes educators can include a behavior coach as part of a weight management program to help teens set behavior goals and overcome barriers to reaching behavior goals

CBT for Medication Adherence and Depression (CBT-AD) in HIV-Infected Patients Receiving Methadone Maintenance Therapy

For individuals with HIV who are current or former injection drug users, depression is a common, distressing condition that can interfere with a critical self-care behavior—adherence to antiretroviral therapy. The present study describes the feasibility and outcome, in a case series approach, of cognitive behavioral therapy to improve adherence and depression (CBT-AD) among individuals with HIV and depression undergoing methadone maintenance treatment for heroin dependence. CBT-AD integrates cognitive behavioral therapy for depression with our intervention for improving adherence to antiretroviral therapy for HIV (Life-Steps; [Safren, S. A., Otto, M. W., Worth, J., Salomon, E., Johnson, W., Mayer, K., et al. (2001). Two strategies to increase adherence to HIV antiretroviral medication: Life-Steps and medication monitoring. Behavioral Research and Therapy, 39, 1151–1162]). Specifically, in CBT-AD, patients first receive a cognitive behavioral intervention focusing on improving skills related to medication adherence. Each of the subsequent CBT modules (activity scheduling, cognitive restructuring, problem-solving training, and relaxation training/diaphragmatic breathing) is designed to address both self-care/adherence behaviors as well as depression. The process and outcome with 4 cases suggest that the treatment was feasible and acceptable and was generally associated with improvements. This case series provides an example of how cognitive behavioral therapists can integrate the treatment of depression with the enhancement of critical self-care behaviors in the context of highly complex, medical and psychiatric comorbidity