CBT is a psychotherapy approach that focuses on changing negative emotions and behaviors by identifying and changing negative or irrational beliefs, or improving negative thoughts or emotions by changing behaviors.
Founded by psychiatrist, Dr. Aaron Beck in the 1960s, CBT is suitable for people of all ages, including children, adolescents and adults.
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CBT believes that one’s cognitive, emotional, behavioral and physical responses are interrelated, and by changing one of the response, the other responses can be changed. During therapy, CBT is practiced to identify those negative thoughts and beliefs that perpetuate your problem, assess whether they fit with the reality, and if not, employ strategies to challenge and adjust them.
More and more empirical evidences have shown that CBT is effective for the treatment of various mental health problems, such as depression, anxiety, posttraumatic disorder, eating disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder.
CBT can also start with behavior, by changing behavior to improve mood or negative thoughts. Therefore, CBT focuses on exploring how to change thoughts or behaviors to improve mood.
CBT can produce results in a short period of time, usually 5 to 20 sessions.
About Cognitive Behavioral Therapy （CBT）
What is online counseling?
Online counseling delivers counseling service with the assistance of information technology. It includes computerized and internet-based counseling, virtual reality (VR) therapy and mobile app therapy (Aboujaoude et al., 2015).
Online counseling uses texts, videos, animations, interactive content to deliver counseling services.
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Virtual Reality (VR) Exposure Therapy
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By designing "safe environments", participants are placed in social situations that they fear or want to avoid.
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Exposure therapy using VR technology.
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Use different skills to release social anxiety
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For clients with fear of public speaking, VR exposure therapy produces the same effect as reality exposure therapy
(Anderson, Edwards & Goodnight, 2017; Anderson et al., 2013; Wallach et al., 2009)
Effectiveness of online CBT
Research has demonstrated that online CBT is an effective counseling approach with similar treatment effect to face-to-face CBT. Online CBT is effective in reducing depressive and anxiety symptoms, and psychological distress that significantly improve quality of life and life satisfaction.
Positive effects can be maintained for 6 months to 4 years.
Show good recovery rate. For example, recovery rate for social anxiety disorder showed below:
Data Source : e.g. Andrews et al., 2018; Andersson et al., 2012; Anderson, Edwards & Goodnight, 2017; Hedman et al., 2014; Dagoo et al., 2014; Stolz et al., 2018; Tulbure et al., 2015
Advantages of online CBT
Our Online CBT Service
“CANDO勇破抑鬱谷”service is a one-stop self-developed online counseling platform offering affordable and effective CBT sevice to the public in Hong Kong. The service aims at enhancing positive mind-set and strengthening one’s resilience for achieving better mental health. Service users can register the service by submitting an online screening questionnaire at our website. Initially qualified service users will be invited to take an intake interview with our therapist for further assessment. Once qualified, service user will receive 11 consecutive weeks of online CBT service.
