News From the WCCBT Board – November 2025

Published On: November 5, 2025

Left to right: Rod Holland, UK (secretary). Mehmet Sungur, Turkey (Officer at large for Training), Lata McGinn,USA (President), Marie do Ceu Salvador, Portugal (EABCT), Nimisha Kumar, India (ACBTA), Ross Menzies, Australia (Treasurer), Ron Chambers (New Zealand (AnzaCBT), Daisuke Fujisawa,japan (ACBTA), Andreas Veith , Germany (Officer at large for Communications and EABCT Rep)

The WCCBT Board and Executive Committee holds its meetings remotely but once a year they will hold one of their Board meeting face to face and this year it took place during the EABCT Annual Congress in September held in Glasgow, Scotland. Nine Board members were attending the congress and this gave many of them the opportunity to met face to face for the first time. They were joined by David Dozois (Canada) and Leslie Sokol, USA (IACBT) who were able to joining online.

For the fifth year running, our Global Ambassador Program is underway. Our regional associations nominated someone connected to their region to host a workshop, a webinar or a lecture. Our Global Ambassadors generously give their time for free and the regional associations provide the support to make each event a success. Income from these events goes to the WCCBT to help fund initiatives that will take forward our mission to increase CBT across the world.

This year we thank Heather Hadjistavropoulos, from Canadian, Sue Spence from Australia, Farooq Naeem on behalf of the Asian Association Agnieszka Popiel from Poland, Anne Marie-Albano, from the USA and Jenny Jordan from New Zealand for their contribution support

Andreas Veith, WCCBT’s Representative at Large with responsibility for communications has been chairing the Communication Committee and over the past few months the WCCBT has been working with Ansley Fones a web designer to develop a new website which will probably be live on WCCBT.org by the time you are reading this report. Take a look at page 7 to see a preview of how the new website will look. At this time it is important that we give a large vote of thanks to John Kentish from the UK who has developed and looked after the WCCBT website since the WCCBT was formed in 2019 on a completely voluntary basis.

One of the responsibilities of the communication group is the coordination of the World CBT Day that takes place on 7th April. With the help of Joshua Plutchik and Lila Bruynesteyn who have been helping us to develop our social media there were many messages from around the world in response to our members contributions this year and on page 5 you will see the proposal for next years World CBT Day which we know will be another success.

Joshua Plutchik and Stephen Crane promoting WCCBT2026 at the EABCT Congress in Glasgow

Between the 24th – 28th June 2026 the WCCBT will hold the WCCBT’s 11^th World Congress in San Francisco, California, USA hosted and organized by the Association of Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies. This is probably the most important event in our calendar and it only happens every three years so make sure you do not miss out since it is a long time to wait for the next one in 2029. The Call for Papers is now open, and you can see the list of keynote speakers on the front page of this eNews with more information on page X and on the Congress website. The Annual General Meeting of the WCCBT will take place during the World Congress and the WCCBT is also going to present its first Global Impact Award to David M. Clark from the University of Oxford, UK in recognition of the work that he has done promoting the development of CBT across the world.

2025 has also been a busy year for WCCBT’s Training and Accreditation Committee and you can read a full report from Mehmet Sungur, Chair of the Committee on page 4. Congratulations must be given for the increasing number of translations of our Guidelines and for the success in publishing them in a major CBT journal this Autumn

We may still be someway reaching our goal of collaborating with clinicians and researchers in Africa to establish a regional CBT umbrella association on the African continent to become a full member of the WCCBT but at the time of publishing this edition of the eNews we have just taken a major step in that journey. The WCCBT–WHO–CBT Organization of Africa Development Taskforce Roundtable
took has just taken place on 28th October and a number of the WCCBT Board members were able to participate. We were excited by the news that Zimbabwe Cognitive and Behavioural Therapies Association (ZCBTA) has now been formally registered and that there are moves to spearhead the registration of the NGO Cognitive and Behavioural Therapies Association of Uganda (CBTAU). These associations will join those in Morocco, South Africa and Nigeria who are already formed and we hope that over the next few years we will see even more African CBT associations forming.

The WCCBT is proud to have sponsored the KOLABO feasibility study run by Dr. Peter Phiri which has now made contact with over 780 professionals from Africa and the Global South. The study is nearing the end of recruitment, closing on the 31st of December 2025, but there is still time to contribute.

The link to the online survey is https://bit.ly/KOLABO_WestandGlobalSouth and it only takes 5 – 10 minutes to complete.