Cognitive Behavioural Processes across Psychological Disorders: A Transdiagnostic Approach to Research and Treatment

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) has established itself as one of the most effective therapies for treating a wide range of behavioral problems. However, research and treatment in this field typically adopts a DSM driven 'disorder-focused' approach-researchers and clinicians target a specific disorder, try to understand its aetiology and maintenance, and try to develop more effective strategies to treat the disorder. This book proposes a bold and original approach to understanding these disorders, one that focuses on what they have in common. Instead of examining in isolation, for example, obsessive compulsive disorders, insomnia, schizophrenia, it asks-what do patients with these disorders have in common? It takes each cognitive and behavioral process-attention, memory, reasoning, thought, behavior, and examines whether it is a transdiagnostic process-i.e., serves to maintain a broad range of psychological disorders. Having shown how these disorders share several important processes, it then describes the practical implications of such an approach to diagnosis and treatment. Importantly it explores why the different psychological disorders can present so differently, despite being maintained by the same cognitive and behavioral processes. This book will give clinicians and researchers a valuable new theoretical base for assessing and treating psychological disorders.

Allison Harvey is in the Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK. Edward Watkins is in the School of Psychology, University of Exeter, UK. Roz Shafran is in the Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford.