Medical research of memory deficits and age-related memory loss has resulted in new explanations and treatment techniques to improve memory, including diet, exercise, stress management, cognitive therapy and pharmaceutical medications.
Some schools of psychotherapy such as cognitive therapy encourage people to alter their own thoughts as a way of treating different psychological maladies (see cognitive distortions).
In addition, they recommended trauma-based cognitive therapy to reduce cognitive distortions related to trauma; they also recommended that the therapist deal with the dissociated identities early in treatment.
Several variants of cognitive behavior therapy have been used in depressed patients, the most notable being rational emotive behavior therapy, and more recently mindfulness-based cognitive therapy.
The combination of pharmacotherapy with cognitive therapy integrates treating the possible underlying biological problems and decreasing the symptoms with psychotherapy as well.
Applicants must have a minimum of 40 hours of clinical training in cognitive therapy, which includes 10 hours of supervision and the completed treatment of at least 10 patients.
As such it serves as a logical extension of cognitive therapy, whereby people are shown proof in the real world that their dysfunctional thought processes are unrealistic.
