CBASP as a Distinctive Treatment for Persistent Depressive Disorder: Distinctive features

The Cognitive Behavioural Analysis System of Psychotherapy (CBASP) is the only psychotherapy model developed specifically for chronic depression. In the latest addition to the successful Distinctive Features series, the developer of CBASP, James P. McCullough Jr., along with Elisabeth Schramm and J. Kim Penberthy, provides an accessible introduction to this approach, showing how it differs from other cognitive behavioural approaches, and highlighting those features – both theoretical and practical – that make it unique.

The unparalleled problems of the chronically depressed patient are some of the most difficult that practitioners face. The disorder has usually continued for a decade or more and patients enter psychotherapy interpersonally withdrawn, detached and with little or no motivation to change. CBASP as A Distinctive Treatment for Persistent Depressive Disorder provides a new look into the phenomenological world of the patient and shows the reader why the world-view of the patient is a valid perception of reality.

CBASP is designed to address the problems of the patient in a step-by-step manner. This book explores the therapist role and shows how the CBASP model enables therapists to address the patient’s depression in a zone of interpersonal safety. Patients are taught how to behave in an interpersonally facilitative manner and shown how everything they do has consequences for others (including the therapist) and on the social environment in which they live. CBASP as A Distinctive Treatment for Persistent Depressive Disorder will be essential reading for novice and experienced CBT therapists, counselors and psychotherapists treating chronic depression.

James P. McCullough, Jr. is Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Elisabeth Schramm is Professor at the University Medical Centre, Freiburg, Germany.

J. Kim Penberthy is Associate Professor in Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences, University of Virginia School of Medicine, Charlottesville, VA, USA.