Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy is a book written by David D. Burns, first published in 1980, that popularized cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).
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Origins
Feeling Good grew out of dissatisfaction with conventional Freudian treatment of depression. Burns's mentor, Dr. Aaron T. Beck (considered the "father" of cognitive therapy; Dr. Albert Ellis is considered the "grandfather"), concluded that there was no empirical evidence for the success of Freudian psychoanalysis in treating depressed people. The idea that negative feelings such as depression and anxiety are triggered by our thoughts or perceptions has a long history, dating back to the Greek philosopher Epictetus, who said that people are disturbed not by things but by the way we think about them.
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Popularity
The book has sold over four million copies in the United States, and has also been published in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Yugoslavia and many other countries. It was named one of the top ten behavioral science books of 1980 by the journal Behavioral Medicine, while according to The Authoritative Guide to Self-Help Books (New York: Guilford Press, 1994) it is the book most frequently recommended for depressed patients by mental health professionals in the United States. It was also rated the top self-help book for depressed individuals, based on a national survey of more than 500 mental health professionals' evaluations of 1,000 self-help books. Burns's The Feeling Good Handbook was rated #2 in the survey. A commentary on Feeling Good is included in 50 Psychology Classics (2006) by Tom Butler-Bowdon
Benefits of bibliotherapy
Evidence from six studies suggests that reading Feeling Good as a form of self-directed bibliotherapy had a large helpful effect on treating depression. Evidence from eleven studies supports bibliotherapy generally, when people also have additional guidance. The evidence was limited, because all trials completed only had a small number of participants.
One of these studies found that in older adults with mild to moderate depression, reading Feeling Good with brief intermittent phone check-in sessions was an effective treatment for depression.
In her text on Cognitive Therapy, Beck's daughter Judith S. Beck recommends it as a "layman's book" to be used by patients undergoing CBT.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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