Make Your Mental Health a Priority
Helping You on Your Journey Towards Healing and Change
Make Your Mental Health a Priority
Helping You on Your Journey Towards Healing and Change
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Psychological Assessment
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a specialized form of therapy that focuses on a person's thoughts and beliefs, and how they influence a person's emotions and actions. The therapist helps the client learn how to identify distorted or unhelpful thinking patterns, recognize and change inaccurate beliefs, relate to others in more positive ways, and change behaviors accordingly. CBT's ability to help change a person's thinking to be more adaptive, effective, and healthy, while helping them change unhealthy behavior patterns, will lead to the alleviation of symptoms and an improved quality of life.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is a relatively short-term therapy approach that focuses on a person's current problems and teaches people specific skills on how to solve them. It is a focused approach to problem solving, which aims to identify the thought processes and behavioral patterns that can lock depression and anxiety in place. Both patient and therapist need to be actively involved in the therapy process, and much of the healing and treatment takes place between sessions in the form of "homework," which will allow the skills being learned in the therapy sessions to be applied in the client's daily life.
Such practicing of skills between sessions helps ensure that the CBT techniques become engrained as long-term change, and can give clients the skills to deal with symptoms if they arise again later on in a person's life.
Research has shown CBT to be one of the most effective therapeutic approaches available for a range of disorders, such as anxiety, depression, mood disorders, substance abuse, and many more. The psychologists within Capstone Psychological Services will develop an individualized and flexible plan that can be applied and adapted to a wide range of problems.CBT treatments for some of the most commonly treated disorders are listed below. Please keep in mind that this is not an exhaustive list, but rather just focuses on some of the most common disorders for which CBT is a highly effective treatment:
Psychological Assessments and Evaluations
People seek psychological evaluations for a wide range of reasons, all of which assist in understanding important aspects of a person’s functioning and using the results to help support and enhance a person’s quality of life. Psychological evaluations can be conducted to assist with identifying mental health diagnoses; identify neurodevelopmental disorders such as ADHD, Specific Learning Disabilities and Autism Spectrum Disorder; assist in understanding educational needs for Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) or 504 Plans; seek accommodations for college or university settings and/or standardized testing; and also to help meet requirements of court ordered evaluations. Evaluations can also be sought in order to increase awareness of personality characteristics, improve treatment outcomes, and identify factors that can influence and affect one’s life.
The clinical and neuropsychologists on staff specialize in both routine and complicated evaluations for children and adults. Each evaluation starts with a comprehensive consultation to understand the nature of the person’s needs. A series of clinical interviews and tests are then designed specific to the questions needing to be answered. As part of the consultation process, an estimate of time to completion will be given. Upon completion of the evaluation, direct feedback and individualized treatment recommendations are provided based upon the results. Depending on the nature of the evaluation, the psychologists at Capstone Psychological Services have extensive experience participating in the IEP/504 process, as well as providing expert testimony based upon evaluations results.