A Clinican's Guide to Think Good-Feel Good
Chapter One
Overview
Child-focused cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) is a popular form of psychotherapy that is
now widely used with a range of mental health problems presented by children and young
people. The empirical basis of child-focused CBT has been demonstrated through a number
of randomised controlled trials that have resulted in a growing conviction amongst clinicians
that CBT is the treatment of choice for many disorders. While research evaluating the efficacy
and effectiveness of child-focused CBT is more substantive than that evaluating other
psychotherapies, the research base is still limited. The first randomised controlled trial (RCT)
of child-focused CBT was not reported until the beginning of the 1990s and it is only recently
that RCTs evaluating child-focused CBT for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) (Barrett
et al. 2004) and chronic fatigue syndrome (Stulemeijer et al. 2005) have been published.
Similarly there is only one published RCT of child-focused CBT for specific phobias
(Silverman et al. 1999a) and social phobias (Spence et al. 2000) and none have yet been published
exploring the efficacy of child-focused CBT in the treatment of anorexia nervosa.
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