Robert L. Leahy

Robert L. Leahy is a psychologist and author and editor of 29 books dedicated to cognitive behavior therapy. He is the director of the American Institute for Cognitive Therapy in New York and Clinical Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College.

Early life and education Leahy was born in Alexandria, Virginia, the son of James J Leahy, a salesman, and Lillian DeVita, an executive secretary. His parents separated when he was 18 months old and his mother moved Robert to New Haven, Connecticut. Many of his clinical books have been instrumental in disseminating the Cognitive Therapy model in its application to the treatment of depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, and emotion regulation. In addition, he has published widely on the application of the cognitive model to the therapeutic relationship, transference and counter-transference, resistance to change, and beliefs about emotion regulation that may underpin problematic strategies for coping with or responding to emotions in the therapeutic context. His clinical and popular audience books have been translated into 21 languages.

Leahy has expanded the cognitive model with his social cognitive model of emotion, which he refers to as Emotional Schema Therapy. that are relevant in depression and anxiety disorders. These include biased evaluations in over-estimating or under-estimating risk, sunk-cost effects, regret anticipation, rumination over regret, and inaccurate predictions of emotions following anticipated outcomes. In 2021, he received an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. Leahy was named the Honorary Life-time President of the New York City Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Association and Distinguished Founding Fellow, Diplomate, of the Academy of Cognitive Therapy. In 2023, Leahy was awarded the Outstanding Clinician Award from Association of Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT) and was named ABCT's first Global Ambassador.

Organizational affiliations Leahy is past-president of the Association of Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT) and the International Association of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (IACBT). He is the former Editor of The Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy and current Associate Editor of the International Journal of Cognitive Therapy.

Books Bipolar Disorder: A Cognitive Therapy Approach (2001) Psychology And The Economic Mind: Cognitive Processes and Conceptualization (2002) Psychological Treatment of Bipolar Disorder (2003) Roadblocks in Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy: Transforming Challenges into Opportunities for Change (2003) The Worry Cure: Seven Steps to Stop Worry from Stopping You (2005) Overcoming Resistance in Cognitive Therapy (2012) Keeping Your Head After Losing Your Job: How to Survive Unemployment (2013) Emotional Schema Therapy (2015) Cognitive Therapy Techniques, Second Edition: A Practitioner's Guide (2017) Science and Practice in Cognitive Therapy: Foundations, Mechanisms, and Applications (2018) The Jealousy Cure: Learn to Trust, Overcome Possessiveness, and Save Your Relationship (2018) Emotional Schema Therapy: Distinctive Features (2019) Don't Believe Everything You Feel: A CBT Workbook to Identify Your Emotional Schemas and Find Freedom from Anxiety and Depression (2020) If Only... Finding Freedom from Regret (2022)