
Show HN: Open Source Generalized Cognitive Behavioral Therapy on iOS - flaque
https://getquirk.app/
======
flaque
For those unaware,

CBT is an extremely effective, evidence based way of treating many mental
health disorders including depression and panic disorder.

It's also a fantastic way of reevaluating biases. It can be extremely
effective at getting to you really evaluate points in your life when something
you've thought is illogically affecting your mood. For example,

> Wow that demo went terribly, everyone must think I'm a dumbass.

It's really easy for us to let these thoughts take over the rest of us. We
tend to find ourselves repeating events that make us angry, guilty, or afraid
as if they were movies in our brains. That can mess with our opinions of
others and cause us undue stress and discomfort.

Instead, CBT will ask us to list the __cognitive distortions __and then
__challenge __this belief. So for the thought above, we 'll say it's:

* mind reading (since we don't know what other people think)

* catastrophizing (since we're implicitly assuming something terrible could happen because our demo went poorly)

Then, it will ask us to come up with a "better" or "alternative" thought like
this:

> That demo went poorly, but I'll do better next time and I'm glad I learned
> from it!

That may seem silly, but the act of writing it down helps you notice when your
thoughts are taking too much control over your life. And the act of
challenging it helps train your brain to "automatically" think better thoughts
in the future.

For some, these negative thoughts control much of their life and we may
consider that a form of pathology. But for many of us, it's just a part of our
monkey brains we'd like to deal with better.

Quirk is made with both uses in mind. It's general enough that it can be used
for any condition. It started as a prototype I build just for me, but I hope
it's useful to others as well. It was built to only incorporate the evidence
backed treatments. Many apps overly couple CBT with "relaxation tapes" or
other untested treatments. Quirk is as slimmed down as possible.

If you don't want to pay the 2 dollars, Quirk is open source and you're
welcome to build it yourself. Here's a couple promo codes as well though:

NM4MKLPYNPNL YMWAXHMKJYA3 A3NALPLLM7LK P4EYRPPX37PM 9TP9P9F6NMWN YKLJK7N7PH3E
4RP3RJJTRRER W6MAYR7JM7HH L76NMLP9PXLT L7A9PLTNKPN7

And if you need to talk, or just have questions about quirk. Feel free to
email me: quirk @ econn.info

~~~
justtopost
I need citations for effacacy. I found CBT to be mostly self confirming bs. I
realize its the psych dujour right now, but actual hard data is fleeting in my
experince.

~~~
flaque
A meta-analysis
([https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3584580/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3584580/))
of 269 studies found it for depression to be roughly equal to medication
treatment and that when combined with medication was more effective than one
or the other:

> Compared to pharmacological approaches, CBT and medication treatments had
> similar effects on chronic depressive symptoms, with effect sizes in the
> medium-large range (Vos, Haby, Barendregt, Kruijshaar, Corry, & Andrews,
> 2004). Other studies indicated that pharmacotherapy could be a useful
> addition to CBT; specifically, combination therapy of CBT with
> pharmacotherapy was more effective in comparison to CBT alone (Chan, 2006).

It also found it to be effective in nicotine cessation and other addictive
behaviors:

> Treatments for smoking cessation found that coping skills, which were
> partially based on CBT techniques, were highly effective in reducing relapse
> in a community sample of nicotine quitters (Song, Huttunen-Lenz, & Holland,
> 2010), and another meta-analysis noted superiority of CBT (either alone or
> in combination with nicotine replacement therapy) over nicotine replacement
> therapy alone (Garcia-Vera & Sanz, 2006).

In anxiety disorders, studies found them to be effective "first line"
approaches, including when the CBT was delivered over the internet:

> In general, CBT is a reliable first-line approach for treatment of this
> class of disorders (Hofmann & Smits, 2008), with support for significant
> positive effects of CBT on secondary symptoms such as sleep dysfunction and
> anxiety sensitivity (Ghahramanlou, 2003). Further, internet-delivered or
> guided self-help CBT showed some promise in immediate symptom relief as
> compared to no treatment, but the long-term maintenance with this modality
> of CBT remains unclear (Öst, 2008; Coull & Morris, 2011).

Also, the meta-analysis also found it to be effective for:

* insomnia

* anger and aggression

* general stress

and many other disorders.

