David D. Burns

David D. Burns (born September 19, 1942) is an American psychiatrist who popularized Aaron Beck’s cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) with his books, Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy and The Feeling Good Handbook.

Burns particularly wrote about the common types of cognitive distortions which are heaven’s reward fallacy, always being right, global labeling, fallacy of change, emotional reasoning, shoulds, blaming, fallacy of fairness, control fallacies, personalization, catastrophizing, jumping to conclusions, overgeneralization, polarized thinking, and filtering. Burns was a student of Beck and the influence of his teacher can be observed from his works. He developed the Burns Depression Checklist (BDC) which for him replaced the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI).