The Future and Promise of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: A Commentary

The Academy for Psychological Clinical Science and the independent accrediting entity it created, the Psychological Clinical Science Accreditation system, have recently launched a movement aimed at reforming all of clinical psychology. If this movement is successful, it will result in a greater emphasis on empirical science in the practice of clinical psychology. As cognitive behavioral therapy (CET) is the approach that currently has the greatest number of controlled scientific studies supporting it, this should be an impetus for CBT to grow. The very same scientific evidence that supports the efficacy of CBT, however, also shows that CBT is far from fully efficacious. Several recent trends that hold great promise to enhance the effectiveness of CBT are discussed, such as greater integration of CBT with biological approaches, cognitive science, systemic approaches, motivational interviewing, and strengths-based approaches.