Why CBT? How do patients feel about it?

There are many different therapies out there - why is CBT (or one of the newer variants) the Chosen One?
I gave a few reasons yesterday -
* that people are capable of change,
* can accept self responsibility for their actions,
* that what we think and believe about a situation can affect our emotions and responses, [...]

Group facilitation

I love working in groups! I love the diversity, and the way that learning occurs, and the challenges of energising and focusing groups. For me groupwork is one of the most demanding and yet rewarding aspects of my work.
There are many many sites on the internet that have a range of activities for groups - [...]

Professional maturity

What constitutes a mature profession?

One that calmly does what it does without constantly being fearful that someone is ‘poaching’ the role
One that is self reflective, and challenges itself to become more and better
One that knows its core purpose and uses whatever scientifically proven strategies support that purpose
One that has ‘jargon’ but doesn’t need to tout [...]

Pain management can’t be cloned

I’ve had occasion over the past few weeks to think about service delivery and teamwork and how to provide really good pain management programmes in a group context.
A problem with any interdisciplinary team is that the members of the team may change as staff leave, or are unwell, or even have annual leave(yes! we like [...]

Postgraduate distance-taught papers in pain and pain management

If you haven’t started planning 2008 postgraduate study yet - there are a couple of ‘down-under’ papers that you can choose from.
University of Otago, Christchurch has the Postgraduate Diploma in Musculoskeletal Medicine (for medical practitioners), which includes a number of papers that can be credited to Masters of Health Sciences. These papers cover a [...]

A simplified explanation of cognitive and behavioural therapies for chronic pain

Cognitive and behavioural therapies (CBT) are not one single ‘therapy’, but a group of interventions that are combined in pain management to help the person develop ways to continue living despite their pain.
Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) is based on the idea that how we think (cognition), how we feel (emotion), and how we act (behaviour) [...]

Chronic Pain’s Favourite Tools

Teamwork and working with thoughts and beliefs.
Some therapists believe cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is ‘only’ for psychologists. Well, I’m not one of them. Frankly, if you are hoping to change ‘what people do’, you are using CBT…whether you’re doing it well or not - that’s another thing! (uhh.. that proviso holds for psychologists [...]