History of the Formation of the WCCBT
The WCCBT was founded on January 7th 2019 by the six founding member associations (AACBT, ABCT, ABCTA, ALAMOC, EABCT, and IACP), who were previously members of the World Congress Committee (WCC).
November 2013. The idea of forming a global organization of CBT was first raised at a meeting of the World Congress Committee (WCC) held in Nashville, Tennessee during the ABCT convention in November 2013 by Lata K. McGinn, then president of IACP. WCC committee members discussed the value of developing a non-regional CBT organization to address global issues and communication in relation to the development and practice of CBT at a worldwide level and agreed to consider the need, desirability and feasibility for such an organization.
January – June, 2014. Lata McGinn (then IACP), Keith Dobson (ABCT), Rod Holland (EABCT) and Philip Tata (UK) formed a working group to discuss the potential for a global CBT organization. They developed a document titled “A Proposal for the Formation of a World Confederation of Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (WCBCT).” The goal of the proposal was aimed at facilitating a further discussion of the next steps needed to assess the benefits for such an organization.
January – June, 2014. Lata McGinn (then IACP), Keith Dobson (ABCT), Rod Holland (EABCT) and Philip Tata (UK) formed a working group to discuss the potential for a global CBT organization. They developed a document titled “A Proposal for the Formation of a World Confederation of Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (WCBCT).” The goal of the proposal was aimed at facilitating a further discussion of the next steps needed to assess the benefits for such an organization.
November 2014. On behalf of the working group, Lata K. McGinn presented the proposal at the WCC meeting held at the 2014 ABCT convention in Philadelphia. The WCC members at the meeting (Sarah Egan (Chair of WCC), Thomas Ollendick, Ross Menzies, Mike Kyrios, and Stefan Hofmann) discussed the proposal and were unanimously in favor of developing a World Confederation of Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies. The WCC committee created a WCC sub-committee and tasked them with creating a formal and detailed proposal, including in it the proposed composition of the world confederation. Lata K. McGinn, then president of IACP was appointed as the chair of the WCC sub-committee
November 2014–December 2018. The WCC Subcommittee (Lata K. McGinn, Chair), Keith Dobson, Rod Holland, Philip Tata, Ross Menzies, Sarah Egan, Jung Hye-Kwon, Thomas Ollendick, and Luis Oswaldo Perez developed a formal proposal for the World Congress Committee to transition into the World Confederation of CBT (WCCBT). In ongoing consultation with the WCC representatives and the boards of the WCC member associations (AACBT, ABCT, ABCTA, ALAMOC, EABCT, and IACP), the WCC Sub-committee worked over this four-year period to create a formal and detailed proposal, including the creation of a mission statement, goals, a strategic plan, By-Laws and policies and procedures for the WCCBT.
November 2018. The last meeting of the World Congress Committee. Chair of the WCC was held. Chair of the WCC, Sarah Egan, thanked the WCC for their work over the years to organize the World Congresses.
January 6th 2019. The WCC was officially closed on January 6th, 2019
January 7th 2019. World Confederation of Cognitive and Behavioral Therapies (WCCBT) was officially launched. Interim President, Sarah Egan, sent out a letter announcing the formation of the WCCBT and thanked the WCC sub-committee for their years of hard work dedicated to the fruition of the WCCBT and also thanked the WCC Committee representatives and the member organizations for their support and consultation in the formation of the WCCBT.
July 17–20 2019. The World Confederation of the Cognitive and Behavioral Therapies will be officially launched at the 9th World Congress of Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies in Berlin, Germany.
History of WCC
World Congress Committee (1995 – 2019)
The tradition of holding World Congresses in Cognitive and Behavior Therapy goes back to 1980 when a World Congress of Behavior Therapy was organized in Jerusalem and was followed by Congresses in Washington, USA (1983), Edinburgh, Scotland (1988) and the Gold Coast, Australia 1992. During this time the International Association of Cognitive Psychotherapies (IACP) also organized the World Cognitive Therapy Congresses in Umea, Sweden (1986), Oxford (1989) and Toronto (1992).
It was the experience of running two separate world congresses in 1992 which had considerable overlap that led to the decision to host combine the two meetings and for the 1995 World Congress in Copenhagen to be called the 1st World Congress of Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies with David Clark (UK) chairing the scientific committee for the cognitive arm and Lars Goran Ost (Sweden) chairing the one for behavior therapy. During this meeting the World Congress Committee (WCC) was formed on 15th July 1995 and continued to meet on an annual basis chaired by Juan Preciado (ABCT) to 1998, Art Nezu (ABCT) to 2005, Kim Halford (AABCT) to 2009, Steven Hayes (ABCT) to 2010 and since then by Sarah Egan. Our thanks go to all those WCC members who have worked over the past 24 years to ensure the effective planning of world congresses and their role in promoting the dissemination of evidence-based principles and practice of cognitive and behavioral therapies.
Last World Congress Committee in Washington, November 2018
From left to right: Keith Dobson (Canada), Lata K. McGinn (USA), Mehmet Sungur (Turkey), Andreas Veith (Germany),
Jung Hye-Kwon (South Korea), Rod Holland (UK), Luis Perez Flores (Peru), Thomas Kalpakoglou (Greece),
Not shown Lynne McFarr (USA), Sarah Egan and Ross Menzies (Australia).