Cognitive behavioral therapy for physical therapists?

[quorthon]

i believe that few physiotherapy methods rely on cognitive behavioural appoaches.....If u look at a physio's "arsenal" u will see many passive modalities,manipulation techniques (which are also PASSIVE because patient cant interfere with that!)...The only method that contains behavioural apporaches is the Mckenzie one....Encouragement and education of patient, self-treatment prinicples, management for prevention of pain recurrences and many other aspects which has the "behavioural" element are fundamental stone of mckenzie method....As a private clinician i can say that through this approach i spent more time discussing with the patient about his problem than just "manipulate", "stretch" him or whatever....And trust me, the first is far far far more effective in the long-term!

[Termy]

Thanks for the reply. I agree, McKenzie contains a behavioral component. But when it comes to CBT, there are things like "graded activity", "graded exposure" and other "techniques" that try to combat psychological pain defense mechanisms like "fear-avoidance", "catastrophizing" and so on.

For physiotherapists dealing with a lot of patients with chronic pain of some sort, it's important to be able to reach through to the patient... I've seen behavioral techniques here and there but I've heard so many positive things about CBT I wanted to find out more about that method specifically.

[quorthon]

i totally agree with you colleague....The problem is that during training in physio school we NEVER learned or talked about the H-U-G-E matter of chronic pain....Neither the pathophysiology behind it (theories that been proposed are very interesting if u study them...) nor how to manage a chronic patient....
And i believe that every physiotherapy method has to include behavioural aspects, because we must admit that over the 80 per cent of the patients we treat in private clinics are in fact CHRONIC ones, not just in an acute/subacute stage.....I wish they were though, because it will be much easier to treat them