EABCT E-NEWS !!!!!!

2009 39th Annual Congress of EABCT
Dubrovnik, Croatia
16-18 September 2009

LATEST NEWS APRIL 2009

Website Dubrovnik congress

40th Annual Congress of EABCT
Milan, Italy
7-10 October 2010

Website: www.eabct2010-milan.it
(not online yet)

EABCT working groups
EABCT Scientific Groups

Other working groups and task forces
Common Language and Psychotherapy

The European Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Therapy (EABCT) is an organisation that brings together 41 individual associations from 29 different countries. Each association is committed to the empirically based principles and practice of behavioural and cognitive therapy approaches in health, social, education and related fields. They also share a common goal of developing the highest standard of clinical practice through the development of training, continuing professional development and evidence based practice.

This website provides information on each of the individual member associations of EABCT and the activities of EABCT that support them - our constitution, board of directors, congress and newsletter.

The European Association for Behaviour Therapy (EABT) was formally established in 1976 but had its origins five years earlier when behaviour therapy groups in Germany, the Netherlands and the UK joined forces to create a European wide movement. In 1992 it added the title cognitive to become EABCT and now has over 25,000 individual clinicians and researchers in its membership making it one of the largest psychotherapy organizations in the world.

At present it is not clear what the position of the European Union is with regard to mental health in general and psychological therapies in particular. At a national level, some European countries have guidelines about the accreditation of psychotherapists, e.g. the Netherlands, Germany. In some countries the Governments have also had an interest in developing guidelines for good clinical practice in Mental Health, having set up specialised Research Institutions: NICE (the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence) in the UK, the Trimbos Institute in the Netherlands that carries out research on evidence based good practice for the Dutch Government, or the INSERM that does the same for the French Government. Look for links to these Institutes below.

At the European level there is no legislation to regulate the practice of psychological therapies or to ensure the quality of what is offered as Psychotherapy.

To our knowledge, at present, there is no official European body to regulate or control Psychotherapy in the European Union.

This lack of regulation is one of EABCT's major concerns. That is why we have developed training standards and an accreditation procedure for our member Associations. You can find these on this website. These standards are still being developed and EABCT is dedicated to support it's member Associations in setting up and developing training and procedures to meet these standards when they don't
have a long tradition in CBT.

Behavioural and Cognitive Therapy comes in different forms and names: Behaviour Therapy, Cognitive Therapy, Cognitive Behaviour Therapy. There are also more specialised forms for more specific problems: Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, Dialectic Behaviour Therapy, Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, etc. They all share the same principles: they are based on scientific research and they are committed to look for evidence of their effectiveness to alleviate Mental Health problems.

As a result of this commitment to provide therapy that has been shown to be effective, it will not be a surprise that the guidelines that are given by the National Research Institutes clearly indicate Behavioural and Cognitive Therapies as first choice for most of the main Mental Health problems such as Depression, Anxiety, Schizophrenia, etc.

NHS guidelines for the UK Government
http://www.nice.org.uk :

Guidelines of the Trimbos Institute
(The Netherlands)
http://www.ggzrichtlijnen.nl :

English version of the INSERM study for the
French Government
http://ist.inserm.fr/basispresse/DP/DPanglais/26february2004.pdf