Understanding Anxiety, Depression and CBT (FutureLearn)

The course will also demonstrate the leading evidence based treatment – Cognitive Behaviour Therapy.
It’s important to emphasise that this course is not intended to be a self-help treatment for anyone experiencing anxiety or depression, nor can it be used to formally diagnose yourself or anyone else.

Syllabus

Week 1: Making sense of the world around us
Week 2: Understanding depression and the CBT approach
Week 3: Understanding anxiety and the CBT approach
Week 4: Tackling the ‘B’ in CBT: Addressing unhelpful behaviours in anxiety and depression
Week 5: Tackling the ‘C’ in CBT: Addressing unhelpful thinking in anxiety and depression

What will you achieve?

• Describe the key signs and symptoms of depression and identify how a depressive disorder differs from simply feeling low or down
• Describe how a depressive disorder is diagnosed and identify an appropriate assessment tool
• Describe the key signs and symptoms of the most frequently occurring anxiety disorders and identify how anxiety disorders differ from simply feeling worried or nervous
• Describe how anxiety disorders are diagnosed and identify an appropriate assessment tool

Identify the most common stereotypes surrounding anxiety and depression and evaluate them on the basis of current knowledge

• Describe how Cognitive Behavioural Therapy can be delivered and identify the types of difficulties that it can help with
• Summarise how what we know about perception (making sense of the world around us) can help us to understand the CBT approach better
• Identify the key components of a Cognitive Behavioural approach to understanding anxiety and depression
• Describe how specific kinds of behaviours and thought pattern can maintain difficulties in anxiety and depression and identify key CBT techniques which are used to address these in therapy