Board certified by the American Board of Professional Psychology, Maurice Prout, PhD, has been a provider of mental health care for more than 40 years. Serving as the faculty liaison for the Military Veteran’s Behavioral Health Certificate, Dr. Maurice Prout received his PhD in psychology from the American University in Washington, D.C., and is trained in cognitive behavioral therapy.

1. What is Cognitive Behavioral
Therapy?
Maurice Prout

2. Introduction
• Board certified by the American Board of Professional Psychology,
Maurice Prout, PhD, has been a provider of mental health care for
more than 40 years. Serving as the faculty liaison for the Military
Veteran’s Behavioral Health Certificate, Dr. Maurice Prout received
his PhD in psychology from the American University in Washington,
D.C., and is trained in cognitive behavioral therapy.
Dysfunctional or negative thinking affects an individual’s behavior,
mood, sense of self, and physical state. Effective in helping patients
to manage depression, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) assists a
person to identify negative patterns of thought, assess the legitimacy
of these thoughts, and to cultivate a healthier outlook when trying to
understand them. CBT does this by teaching a person to be aware of
what they're thinking as they are thinking it, calling into question
any destructive patterns in real time. This can have the effect of
diffusing the energy of the repetitious thoughts, giving the person
more choices as to how they might feel or act in a given situation.

3. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
• As negative behavior or thoughts incline an individual towards
depression, thereby making it highly difficult to escape its
downward progression, clinicians practicing cognitive behavioral
therapy help patients change their behavioral patterns by teaching
them to listen very carefully to the things they are telling
themselves. They then learn that they can choose to pay attention to
these thoughts, or not, depending on whether the thoughts are
constructive or destructive..
CBT is based upon the clinician and patient working together to
change negative thinking and also understanding that how a person
thinks is more important than why they think the way that they do.
Studies demonstrate cognitive behavioral therapy to be helpful in
managing mild to moderate depression and effective in treating
severe depression when administered in combination with
antidepressant medication.