Practice Goals/Target Population
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a problem-focused, therapeutic approach designed to help individuals identify and change dysfunctional beliefs, thoughts, and patterns that contribute to problem behavior. In general, CBT has been used to address a wide range of problems, including antisocial behavior (i.e., a wide variety of problem behaviors such as violence toward people or animals, destruction of property, deceitfulness, oppositional-defiance, theft, and/or serious rule violations).
This CBT practice, however, focuses specifically on youth within residential facilities with antisocial behavior who committed a serious crime or offense resulting in contact with the juvenile justice system (Armelius and Andreassen 2007; Dishion, Dodge, and Lansford 2006). The overall goal of CBT for youth in residential treatment (including both secure and non-secure settings) is to reduce recidivism and increase prosocial behaviors.
Practice Components
CBT focuses on teaching youth prosocial skills that will help them to interact positively with other people. CBT is based on the idea that thoughts, images, beliefs, and attitudes are closely related to behavior (Armelius and Andreassen 2007). Treatment may focus heavily on cognitive change, or it may incorporate several strategies such as interpersonal cognitive problem solving, social skills training, anger control, critical reasoning, values development, negotiation abilities, and creative thinking. Examples of these broader, more comprehensive CBT programs for these youths include Aggression Replacement Training (Goldstein and Glick 1987), Reasoning and Rehabilitation Program (Ross and Fabiano 1985), and Moral Reconation Therapy (Little and Robinson 1988).
CBT interventions for youth in residential facilities also include components that specifically focus on addressing criminogenic needs such as correction of criminal thinking errors. Criminal thinking errors include victim-stance, which refers to youth viewing themselves as victims rather than perpetrators and therefore refusing to take responsibility for their actions. CBT helps to correct this pattern by teaching youth to recognize and admit culpability for problem behavior while learning to adjust their self-perceptions (Greenwood and Turner 1993).
CBT programs vary in duration, ranging from shorter programs that last a week to longer programs that last for a year (Armelius and Andreassen 2007).
