My name is Mark Wigley, a first aid, ligature and self-harm trainer and Director of Meducate Training Ltd and owner of markwigley.online and I thought I would share with you a brief biography of a very influential and well known person in the world of cognitive behaviour therapy.

So, who is Aaron Beck?

Aaron Beck (b 1921) is an American Psychiatrist who is regarded as the father of cognitive therapy and cognitive behaviour therapy* (CBT). His theories are widely used today in treating clinical depression and anxiety disorders. He also created self-reporting measures for depression and anxiety, notably the Beck Depression Inventory which is one of the most widely used scoring methods for depression and anxiety.

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He has conducted much research into psychotherapy, psychopathology, suicide and psychometrics and has authored or co-authored over 25 books on these subjects.

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Through some of his work with depressed patients for example, he found that they tended to experience streams of negative thoughts that appeared without anything triggering them. He called these ‘automatic thoughts’ and categorised them into three groups: negative ideas about oneself, the world and the future. The patient only had to focus on these automatic thoughts for a short amount of time to start treating them as valid thoughts!

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* Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is a type of talking treatment which focuses on how your thoughts, beliefs and attitudes affect your feelings and behaviour, and teaches you coping skills for dealing with different problems.

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