ABCT, also known as ‘Head and Heart’ therapy, is a therapeutic model showing promise as an effective intervention for depression and other conditions and offers two components of treatment.
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01. Training Information
02. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy CBT
03. Psychodynamic Therapy PDT
04. Combination Therapy CBT and PDT
Training Information
Training is now available in Perth, Western Australia or by invitation to other states and countries. Training is offered once a year at Psychology Australia.
Group Workshop Training: There are two group days that must be attended if you wish to pursue training and accreditation as an ABCT Therapist.
Individual Training: Therapists who wish to receive individual training must attend 5 personal one-on-one training sessions with Genevieve and a sixth session for assessment at which they must present 10 completed, satisfactory cases with all paperwork to standard. Contact admin@psychaust.com.au or genevieve@psychaust.com.au for details.
Cognitive Fluency CF
There are two aspects to ABCT: the Cognitive and the Psychodynamic.
One aspect of ABCT is based in Cognitive Therapy and employs mastery, fluency and elements of Precision Teaching combined with cognitive restructuring such as that used in the Milnes study (1998). It constructs a formalised rational statement to dispute patients’ distorted cognitions and coaches patients to automaticity using Precision Teaching monitoring. Changes in belief are subjectively measured each session. The CF component uses the strategies of cognitive restructuring, repetition, speed, fluency and accelerated learning, and provides the patient with an individualised and formalised set of cognitive statements in the first person. These are read aloud up to fifty times daily by the patient, over the period of treatment, until degrees of speed (fluency) and automaticity are reached. By the end of the treatment patients carry an enduring set of rational statements in their memory. Evidence from the study with depressed adolescents showed that newly formed rational statements read three times a week at increasingly faster speeds rendered significantly increased belief in the adolescent regarding that statement over a period of a further six weeks without therapist contact (Milnes 1998).
Psychodynamic Therapy PDT
The other component is based in Psychodynamic Therapy (PDT) and challenges the patient to function from different ego-states. Rather than enter the debate regarding various types of psychodynamic modalities this therapy formalises some discrete psychodynamic exercises. In this way the treatment is operationalized and becomes discrete and measurable. The PDT component, uses psychodynamic exercises to assist patients to resolve inner conflicts by teaching inner and outer dialogue between the patient’s own ego-states of Parent and Child, and to visualise pictures as a means of changing the way the patient thinks and imagines things. The Management of Mental Disorders handbook (World Health Organisation, 2000) recommends psychotherapy as ‘a useful treatment for depression’. If the psychotherapy targets current issues and problems related to the patient’s depression, more than 50% receiving psychotherapy alone get better (WHO, 2000).
Combination Therapy CBT and PDT
Treatments of Head & Heart, CF and PDT, are valuable in and by themselves and may be used separately by cognitive-based therapists or psycho-dynamically-based therapists. The choice would be made depending on the nature of the patient’s psychological disorder and the preferred approach of both patient and therapist. The combination treatment (CF plus PDT) is a four to six-session, manual-based highly concentrated treatment plan. Using both components, ABCT takes one hour to set-up in the first session and thirty minutes each for the subsequent three sessions, taken over three weeks. Homework takes approximately five to twenty minutes a day and, realistically, forms part of the therapy, so the total therapy time taken to treat depression in adults using ABCT can be as short as 3.5 to 7 hours. This is radically different to recommendations such as those given by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE). For moderate and severe depression the duration of all psychological treatments should typically range from 16 – 20 sessions over 6 – 9 months (NICE, 2004). The establishment of the effectiveness of ABCT challenges these time frames and revolutionises the way depression is treated. With the cost of depression treatment and loss of productivity so high in Australia, a short-term, efficacious and inexpensive treatment for depression is welcomed by all stakeholders. Papers, posters and workshops about ABCT have been presented to the Australian Association for Cognitive and Behavioural Therapy at both the State (Milnes, 2000) and National conferences (Milnes, 2004), the Annual Conference of the Australian Psychological Society (Milnes, 2003a), at the National Congress of Psychology Private (Milnes, 2003b), and at the World Congress of Psychotherapy Malaysia (2005) and Beijing (2008).
