In psychosocial wellbeing interventions, CBT primarily aims to do what?

• A. Target changing maladaptive thoughts and behaviors
• B. Emphasize acceptance and values-driven action
• C. Focus on dream analysis
• D. Rely only on pharmacotherapy

Answer: (A)

Cognitive-behavioral therapy focuses on changing maladaptive thoughts and behaviors by helping people identify distorted thinking patterns and the actions that maintain distress, then teaching practical strategies to modify them. It rests on the idea that thoughts, feelings, and behaviors influence one another, so altering how someone interprets a situation and encouraging healthier behaviors can reduce emotional suffering and improve functioning. Techniques like cognitive restructuring address automatic negative beliefs, while behavioral methods such as activation or exposure help adjust actions to break the cycle of avoidance and maladaptive responses. The option describing acceptance and values-driven action points to ACT, which emphasizes psychological flexibility rather than directly changing thoughts and behaviors in the CBT sense. Dream analysis belongs to psychodynamic approaches that explore unconscious meanings, not CBT. Relying only on pharmacotherapy reflects a medical treatment rather than a psychosocial intervention.