Early Days of Cognitive Therapy Posted on December 3, 2007 Noreen Reilly-Harrington (bio) participated in Aaron Beck's initial use of cognitive therapy in bipolar disorder.

My career started back at the University of Pennsylvania where I did my undergraduate work in psychology. I had the opportunity to work with Dr. Aaron Beck at that time in the early 1990s. And Dr. Beck actually first founded cognitive therapy for the treatment of depression. When I started working with him back in the 1990s he began applying cognitive therapy to the treatment of bipolar disorder.

And I quickly became very interested in that topic and then went on to do my graduate work, my PhD, at Temple University also in Philadelphia. And I continued to work with the Beck Institute and the Center for Cognitive Therapy in developing the applications of cognitive therapy for the treatment of bipolar disorder.

Then I actually went on to Mass General Hospital and Harvard Medical School for my pre-doctoral internship and stayed on there for my post-doctoral training as well. I became involved in research with Dr. Gary Sachs at Mass General Hospital, and I’ve remained there on the faculty of Harvard Medical School for the past 11 years now.

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