MINDFULNESS BASED COGNITIVE THERAPY FOR DEPRESSION怎么样

MINDFULNESS BASED COGNITIVE THERAPY FOR DEPRESSION怎么样
MINDFULNESS BASED COGNITIVE THERAPY FOR DEPRESSION怎么样

MINDFULNESS BASED COGNITIVE THERAPY FOR DEPRESSION怎么样
Shallowness comes when we step away from reading. The past month has turned out to be full of hustle and bustle, and inevitably, I became ignorable and unmindful. This book was forced to an end on the very last night of my summer holiday. Mindfulness-based psychotherapy has become a trend recently and it has been used widely, in areas such as recurrent depression, anxiety, and stress reduction. I was fortunate enough to attend Jon Kabat-Zinn’s talk in person and even dine with Mark Williams, which consolidated my belief in this approach and motivated me in walking along this way. Mindfulness, the core of Buddhism, was once a foreign topic to the West, but has attracted many attention in the last several decades, and finally came to clinical psychology, where it can contribute to the well-being of many patients. This book illustrated the story behind the development of MBCT--Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy. Similar to the format of a proper psychology journal paper, the first part can be regarded as introduction, second, method, and third, result and discussion. As clinical trials are mandatory for any therapy to become recognized by the health authority, you may treat this book as a detailed report, where the whole program, compromising 8 group-sessions, is recorded. Compared with the other book ‘The Mindful Way Through Depression’, this one aims for professionals or researchers. A full taste of the standardized MBCT program is ensured. Perhaps, more background information can be provided here. Depression plays a special role in psychopathology, prevalent, severe, co-morbid with other mental disorders, and recurrent. Most major depressive episodes, in the first place, occurred after major stress events in life, such as bereavement, great loss and failure, yet it may come back many times afterwards in the absence of stress events. This intriguing phenomenon, i.e. relapse and recurrence of depression leads to its cognitive aspect—the negative thinking pattern, found by Beck. Sad moods gradually become paired with the negative thinking spiral after a few occurrences of depressive episodes, and as a result, a minor down moment may trigger very autonomous negative cognition, such as rumination, and self-denigration, thus comes another depressive episode. The original plan of the MBCT teams was to develop a maintenance version of CBT for depression. Result was very encouraging—MBCT significantly reduced the chance of relapse/recurrence for patients with three or more previous episodes of depression, but not those with only two episodes. It was suggested that MBCT might not work on patients with acute depression as they lack the ability to concentrate, however, it might not be the case and there are some studies going on, as Mark Williams told me. Mindfulness, being aware of what is going on in our mind without identifying with it, is a remarkable ability that brings inner calmness, peace, and wisdom. Through trainings and daily practices in body scan, 3-minute breath space, sitting meditation, and walking meditation, patients eventually built up the habit of stepping back from the autonomous thoughts, feelings and responses, taking a deep breath, paying attention to the body, and realizing there are many more options. Thoughts are just thoughts, not truths. Once understood, we may nip in the bud thus prevent going deeper into the negative thinking spiral. Instead of changing the content of our mental constructs, MBCT stresses the importance of changing our relationship with the negative mood, thoughts, and bodily sensations. Things come and go, but this understanding is hard to achieve without mindfulness practice. Therefore, a trend becomes perceivable in the field of depression. That is, treating acute depression with antidepressant plus CBT/interpersonal psychotherapy and preventing recurring depression with MBCT.