SUMMARY Although cognitive behavioral therapy is known as an effective treatment for patients suffering from clinical depression. Despite this, cognitive behavioral therapy is found to not be as effective on religious patients partly due to the emphasis on values like personal autonomy and self-efficacy as necessary for mental health whereas most religious people want to depend on only God for everything. This value discrepancy is a reason why many religious individuals do not seek mental health services and why there is not a reliable sample size of religious populations in most clinical studies. A study performed by graduate professionals L. Rebecca Propst from the Department of Counseling Psychology, Graduate School of Professional Studies as well as Richard Ostrom, Philip Watkins, Terri Dean and David Mashburn from the Western Baptist Graduate School of Psychology examined how the values of cognitive behavioral therapy could be aligned with the values of religious individuals in order for them to reap the benefits of the treatment. Propst discovered that by …show more content…
The study compared how highly religious clinically depressed patients responded towards standard cognitive behavioral therapy versus explicitly religious cognitive behavioral therapy which included a pastoral counseling treatment. Half of the therapists in this study shared the same religious values and half did not. The purpose of this study was to (a) evaluate the effectiveness of regular cognitive behavioral therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy with a religious component, (b) compare the effectiveness of religious cognitive behavioral therapy versus ordinary pastoral counseling without the components of cognitive behavioral therapy and (c) assess whether or not adapting cognitive behavioral therapy to a client’s religious values will increase the effectiveness of a cognitive behavioral therapy treatment by a non religious