Homework assignments in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) can help your patients educate themselves further, collect thoughts, and modify their thinking.
Homework is not something that you just assign randomly. You should make sure you:
| Behavioural Activation | Getting active, depressed patients out of bed or off the couch, and helping them resume normal activity |
|---|---|
| Monitoring automatic thoughts | From the first session forward, you will encourage your patients to ask themselves, “What’s going through my mind right now?” |
| Evaluating and responding to automatic thoughts | At virtually every session, you will help patients modify their inaccurate and dysfunctional thoughts and write down their new way of thinking. Patients will also learn to evaluate their own thinking and practice doing so between sessions. |
| Problem-solving | At virtually every session, you will help patients devise solutions to their problems, which they will implement between sessions. |
| Behavioural skills | To effectively solve their problems, patients may need to learn new skills, which they will practice for homework. |
| Behavioural experiments | Patients may need to directly test the validity of automatic thoughts that seem distorted, such as “I’ll feel better if I stay in bed” |
| Bibliotherapy | Important concepts you are discussing in session can be greatly reinforced when patients read about them in black and white. |
| Preparing for the next session | Preparing for the next therapy session. The beginning part of each therapy session can be greatly speeded up if patients think about what is important to tell you before they enter your office. |
You should also decide the frequency of the homework should be assigned: should it be daily, weekly?
If your patient does not do homework, that’s OK! Explore as a team, in a non-judgmental way, to explore why the homework was not done. Here are some ways to increase adherence to homework: