Conclusion
Modern behavioral and cognitive-behavioral interventions emphasize the role of learning and adaptation to the environment both in shaping and maintaining normal life functions and in the emergence of maladaptive symptomatology. In essence, these approaches focus on behavior as important in its own right and often seek to change instances of disordered behavior via the application of clearly articulated basic principles of learning. Three basic, interrelated perspectives exist: classical conditioning, which emphasizes the learning of associations between classes of stimuli; operant conditioning, which emphasizes the learning of relations between behaviors and their consequences; and the cognitive perspective, which emphasizes the role of idiosyncratic beliefs and misconceptions in coloring each of the two earlier perspectives. There can be little doubt that the learning-based approaches have sparked a major revolution in the treatment of psychiatric disorders and that each perspective can point to a series of notable gains. These approaches can often be combined with medications for beneficial effect and should be part of the armamentarium of any well-trained clinician.
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