Aaron T. Beck

Psychiatrist

• Born: July 18, 1921
• Place of Birth: Providence, Rhode Island
• Died: November 1, 2021
• Place of Death: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Aaron T. Beck was a pioneering figure in psychiatry, considered the leading figure behind the development of cognitive therapy in the twentieth century. The author of many influential books and articles, he also created landmark methods for assessing and treating depression.

Life

Aaron T. Beck was born in 1921 in Providence, Rhode Island. From the time he was a child, he had a keen interest in psychiatry. His parents encouraged his learning and interest in science. While attending Brown University, he served as an associate editor of the Brown Daily Herald and earned many honors and awards for his writing and oratorical skills.

After graduating magna cum laude from Brown in 1942, Beck entered Yale Medical School, eventually serving a residency in pathology at the Rhode Island Hospital. Although still interested in psychiatry, Beck became attracted to neurology and served a residency at the Cushing Veterans Administration Hospital in Framingham, Massachusetts. During this residency, he became interested in psychoanalysis and cognition, and he earned a doctorate in psychiatry from Yale University in 1946. He gained substantial experience in conducting long-term psychotherapy while serving for two years as a fellow at the Austin Riggs Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. During the Korean War, Beck served as the assistant chief of neuropsychiatry at the Valley Forge General Hospital.

In 1954, Beck joined the department of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), and graduated from the Philadelphia Psychoanalytic Institute in 1956. Initially, he explored the psychoanalytic theories of depression, but, finding no confirmation of these theories, he developed the cognitive therapy (CT) approach, including several well-known tests to assess depression, such as the and the Scale for Suicide Ideation. In 1959, he began to investigate the psychopathology of depression, suicide, disorders, panic disorders, alcoholism, and drug abuse. He also researched and cognitive therapy for these disorders.

As Beck developed cognitive therapy in the 1960s, his basic premise was that patients could be taught to evaluate and change their thinking to improve their moods because thinking shapes mood, and mental disorders are fundamentally thinking disorders. Beck worked with patients who were suffering from depression to help them recognize and understand their negative, automatic thinking and how it influenced their moods and behavior. Cognitive therapy differed from psychoanalysis, the predominant form of psychotherapy for most of the twentieth century, in several key ways. Practitioners of cognitive therapy collaborated with their patients, over a shorter course of time. Unlike psychoanalysis, cognitive therapy prioritized rigorous experimental science over theory. Eventually, cognitive theory overtook psychoanalysis in its influence on psychiatry and the way psychotherapy was viewed, researched, and practiced.

Beck founded the Center for Cognitive Therapy at UPenn as an outpatient clinic, and training and research center, and in 1994, Beck and his daughter, Judith Beck, established the Beck Institute for Cognitive Therapy and Research. Beck became a professor emeritus of psychiatry at UPenn, and served as the director of the Aaron T. Beck Psychopathology Research Center, founded in 1998 to focus on suicide prevention research. In 2003, a study by Beck and a colleague showed that, over an eighteen-month period, cognitive therapy halved the rate of repeat suicide attempts by those who had recently made attempts. His other research interests included the use of cognitive therapy as a treatment for schizophrenia. Additionally, Beck focused on increasing access to cognitive therapy treatments in community settings and studying the effectiveness of these treatments. To this end, in 2007 he launched the Beck Initiative Training Program in Cognitive Therapy in Philadelphia, a collaboration between UPenn, the city’s Department of Behavioral Health and Mental Retardation Services, Community Behavior Health managed care, and therapists.

Beck served on many review panels for the National Institute of Mental Health and on the editorial boards of several journals, and he lectured throughout the world. He served as a consultant for psychiatric hospitals and managed-care organizations, and he set up inpatient and outpatient programs organized according to the cognitive therapy model. A prolific writer, Beck published hundreds of articles and many books, including Depression: Clinical, Experimental, and Theoretical Aspects (1967), Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders (1979), Cognitive Therapy and Depression (1980, coauthor), Cognitive Therapy of Personality Disorders (1990), and Prisoners of Hate: the Cognitive Basis of Anger, Hostility, and Violence (1999).

Beck is widely recognized as the father of cognitive therapy and as one of the most influential psychotherapists of his time. Among his many honors, he was awarded the Albert Lasker Clinical Medical Research Award in 2006. On October 23, 2013, the fiftieth anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s Community Mental Health Act, he became the first person to receive the Kennedy Community Health Award.

Beck died in November 2021. He was one hundred years old.

Bibliography

Beck, Aaron T. Foreword. Cognitive Behavior Therapy: Basics and Beyond. 2nd ed. By Judith S. Beck. Guildford, 2011.

Carey, Benedict. "Dr. Aaron T. Beck, Developer of Cognitive Therapy, Dies at 100." The New York Times, 2 Nov. 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/11/01/health/dr-aaron-t-beck-dead.html. Accessed 5 Nov. 2024.

Chadwick, Paul D., Max J. Birchwood, and Peter Trower. Cognitive Therapy for Delusions, Voices, and Paranoia. Wiley, 1996.

Dattilio, Frank M., and Arthur M. Freeman, eds. Cognitive-Behavioral Strategies in Crisis Intervention. 3rd ed. Guilford, 2008.

"Dr. Aaron T. Beck: A Life Well-Lived." Beck Institute, beckinstitute.org/about/dr-aaron-t-beck/. Accessed 5 Nov. 2024.

Ingram, Rick E., Jeanne Miranda, and Zindel V. Segal. Cognitive Vulnerability to Depression. Guilford, 1998.

Miller, Michael C. “Dr. Aaron T. Beck’s Enduring Impact on Mental Health.” Harvard Mental Health Letter 28.4 (2011): 8.

Rosner, Rachael I. “The ‘Splendid Isolation’ of Aaron T. Beck.” ISIS: Journal of the History of Science in Society, vol. 105, no. 4, 2014, pp. 734–58. Historical Abstracts with Full Text, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=30h&AN=100279466&site=eds-live. Accessed 31 Jan. 2017.

Stirman, Shannon Wiltsey, et al. “The Beck Initiative: A Partnership to Implement Cognitive Therapy in a Community Behavioral Health System.” Psychiatric Services, vol. 60, no. 10, 2009, pp. 1302–4, doi:10.1176/appi.ps.60.10.1302. Accessed 31 Jan. 2017.