Homeworks are an important aspect of cognitive behavioral therapy. It aims to get and give information with homework in the initial sessions while also transferring these skills into everyday life. Many studies indicated that patients who adapt and regularly do their homework showed more improvement than patients who do not. In addition, studies show that homework is an important factor in the effectiveness of therapy.
Homework in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is a technique used by therapists to help their clients learn skills and techniques so they can use them on their own. The homework includes reading material, exercises, writing assignments, or other tasks that the therapist assigns to help the client improve his/her life. Homework provides positive reinforcement for following through with therapy activities as well as providing motivation for continued progress.
What is the main purpose of doing homework?
Matching these experiences with an actual task (homework) encourages repetition which may help to transfer knowledge from short-term memory to long-term memory more effectively than any other practice.
Source: verywellmind.com
It has a positive impact on the results of treatment. For this reason, therapists who work with the techniques of cognitive behavioral therapy must know details related to the application of homework. And to apply the techniques at the right time and in the correct way. The aim of this review is to describe homework. (Which are particularly used in cognitive behavioral therapy.) Frame, explain the implementation of the processes and commonly used homework types. Also, it describes factors that influence compliance against homework, finally examined the effectiveness of homework in the process of cognitive behavioral therapy in this article.
Purpose of Homework inCognitive Behavioral Therapy
A book written by Beck and Tompkins (2007), also emphasizes that homework used within the framework of cognitive therapy had 6 main objectives. These are:
- Find practical solutions to problems
- Increase self-awareness
- To improve cognitive, behavioral, and emotional skill practice
- To reinforce the techniques learned in the sessions
- Test your thoughts
- Prevent recurrences. The main goal of all these homework assignments is to identify and change discordant thoughts by applying the new skills learned during sessions, as in the CBT.
Source: https://dergipark.org.tr/en/download/article-file/115203
Last Updated on December 3, 2021 by Lucas Berg
