This text-based course is a transcript of the webinar, “Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for SLPs: Applications for Counseling, Behavioral Change, and Clinical Supervision,” presented by William S. Evans, MS, CCC-SLP.
>> William Evans: Why do I think that cognitive behavioral therapy is useful for speech pathologists? I became interested in CBT during my clinical fellowship at Mass. General, while I was providing cognitive rehabilitation to patients. Much of our focus there is high-level strategy training (i.e. meta-cognitive strategy training) for high-level patients. There seemed to be a lot of emotional barriers or belief barriers as to whether or not they would be using the strategies that we talked about. The great part is when I was doing my clinical fellowship I was also working on my Doctorate at BU. I took a CBT course in the school’s social work department while I was working with patients of my own. That is the course that I took with Daniel Beck. I have been thinking a lot about this framework since then and working to apply certain aspects to my practice over the past three years. Hopefully, after this course, you will have ways of applying this framework and approach to your practice as well.
Learning Outcomes
As a result of this course, you will be able to describe basic elements of CBT theory including the interactive components of the cognitive conceptualization model. You will also be able to explain several common approaches and tools used in CBT to identify and address what we call distorted beliefs and to promote behavioral change. You will also be able to describe at least three specific ways you can incorporate relevant elements of CBT into aspects of your own practice. One caveat, I am a clinician but I am also a researcher, and you will see that I really believe in this. I think that it is very helpful. In terms of evidence-based practice, you have to take into account the evidence I am bringing to bear. There are no wide-scaled controlled studies for using this as an approach within speech-language pathology, although there is a lot of research for CBT in general. I am referring to anecdotes and expert opinion. I am hoping to convince you how awesome this is by believing it and being passionate about it, but keep in mind that I am not bringing huge literature to bear.
