Although a lot of Romanian mental health professionals had already been interested in following a BCT training, RABCT was founded only in 2000. This delay had both historical and financial reasons.

Before 1990, any form of psychotherapy was forbidden because of ideological reasons. For 40 years no opportunity for training was possible and the access to information was drastically limited by the former communistic regime.

 

The initiative of developing a Romanian BCT school belongs to Dr. Radu Teodorescu, the president of our association.

Between 1997-1998 he organized an introductory course in BCT, at Timisoara, followed by a seminar dedicated to anxiety disorders where three members of French Association of CBT (Jean-Pierre Lepine, Catherine Musa si Antoine Pelissolo) presented cognitive models and interventions. Both manifestations had a great impact and that led him to create a group of initiative.

In 1999, at EABCT Congress in Dresden, they contacted Professor Gerhard Lenz from Austrian Association for BCT who agreed to start first training group in Bucharest. In the same year, Professor David Kingdon was invited to Bucharest for a workshop regarding BCT approach in psychotic disorders.

 

In 2000, RABCT was officially founded and the first training program, according with EABCT standards, was ready to start.

The training curriculum was established in collaboration with Professor Lenz and Judith Beck.

The financial support was provided by Austrian Embassy from Bucharest and New Europe College.

Under these auspices, first training group started its activity in June 2000. Professor Lenz, also involved other members of Austrian and German Association for BCT in this process (Irmgard Oberhummer, Ruth Werdigier, Rudolf Marx, Martin Eigner, Simona Edelman, Michael Bach) and some of the most famous personalities in this field were invited to Bucharest: Professor Ivar Hand, Professor Paul Salkovskis and Professor Martin Bohus.

The bibliography is provided by our generous Austrian collegues.

The trainees are psychologists and psychiatrists, coming from five Romanian

cities, Brasov, Contanta, Ploiesti, Timisoara and Bucharest, which we hope will become training centers for BCT in the future.  

 

RABCT became full member of EABCT in 2001, in Istanbul, during the Annual Congress. RABCT was strongly supported by Professor Mehmet Sungur, president of European association at that time. Following this event, Professor Aron T. Beck agreed to be the first honorary fellow of our association.

 

Since 2002 summer schools were organized, first in Busteni and the second in Eforie.

In 2004 Austrian Association for BCT invited us to Vienna for a seminar.

In 2003 RABCT was accredited by Romanian Federation of Psychotherapy.

 

In the four years of functioning, several members of RABCT (Mugur Daniel Ciumageanu, Laura Constantinescu, Patricia Constantinescu, Ruxandra Iacob, Iuliana Radu, Adela Salceanu and Consuela Vasilescu) have analyzed the possibilities of developing a Romanian school of BCT, meant to keep the continuity of the training process for the following generations of practitioners.

 

In 2003, a new group of training was started in Bucharest, for psychologists and general practitioners.

In 2004, Timisoara have become a training center of RABCT by opening of a training group for psychologists and psychiatrists.