All in the Mind - 14/07/2009

Claudia Hammond examines Cognitive Behavioural Therapy to find out if it is, as some people think, the easy option in helping them come to terms with mental illness. It is the biggest investment in talking therapies that there has ever been: 300 million pounds over three years on training an army of more than 3,000 therapists in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, or CBT. The first trainees are just about to graduate. But the programme asks, with the help of BBC Radio 4 listeners, if it is a scheme which will make a real difference or is it just a quick fix? CBT has been branded a panacea for treating mental illness. Some people think it would be easier to have a course of this than to delve into their past and address their relationships with their parents. Yet is a course of CBT that easy? In reality, it examines behavioural patterns and sees how they can be changed in order to deal with situations better. But change is sometimes hard to come to terms with, so CBT might not be the easy option. Claudia Hammond finds out what a course of CBT would entail, and meets the blogger Fighting Monster, who talks about her work as a social worker for the over-65s.