The CBT community is mourning the loss of Brazilian psychiatrist Dr. Paulo Knapp, who passed away on January 10, 2022, at the age of 65. Dr. Knapp was a champion of CBT who influenced the field of mental health in his country and abroad. Along with Dr. Melanie Pereira, Dr. Knapp studied CBT at Beck Institute (BI) in the 1990s. At the time, most practitioners in Brazil were psychodynamically-oriented, and Dr. Knapp and Dr. Pereira were instrumental in educating clinicians about CBT. Together, they grew the study and practice of CBT in Brazil. Dr. Knapp founded and was the first president of the Brazilian Federation of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and delivered countless trainings and lectures on CBT throughout Brazil.
In the early 2000s, Dr. Knapp returned to Philadelphia and worked with Dr. Aaron Beck and his Recovery-Oriented Cognitive Therapy (CT-R) group at the University of Pennsylvania (now at Beck Institute). BI Center for CT-R Co-Director, Dr. Paul Grant, said Dr. Knapp was “a pioneer in the psychosocial treatment of serious mental health conditions such as schizophrenia.” Dr. Knapp was actively involved in the development of CT-R and was always enthusiastic about bringing cutting-edge treatment approaches back to his network in Brazil. He recently oversaw the translation of the landmark text Recovery-Oriented Cognitive Therapy for Serious Mental Health Conditions into Portuguese.
In 2015, Dr. Knapp, along with Christian Keiling, MD, PhD, and Aaron T. Beck, MD, published an important article (Knapp et al., 2015) that examined mental health professionals’ preferred theoretical orientations. This article showed that CBT was the most widely practiced form of psychotherapy in the world. The authors also found that preference for CBT had increased over time.
In 2019, Beck Institute invited Dr. Knapp to join its International Advisory Committee (IAC). In this role, Dr. Knapp advised Beck Institute on important trends in CBT training and practice in Brazil and helped ensure that our training offerings were appropriately adapted to the language and culture. “Paulo was such a wonderful person. He was always so genial, unassuming, and humble,” said Beck Institute President, Dr. Judith Beck. We are grateful for Dr. Knapp’s service and his tireless leadership. There is no doubt that his work has improved the lives of many people, both in Brazil and worldwide. He will be missed.
Knapp, P., Kieling, C., & Beck, A. T. (2015). What do psychotherapists do? A systematic review and meta-regression of surveys. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 84(6), 377-378.