Cognitive Approach to Explaining Depression

• cognition


  refers to our cognitions or thought processes.

  model is concerned with the way we think

  INPUT -> PROCESSING -> OUTPUT
• Beck's Negative Triad


  cognitive psychs -> human behaviour is influenced by schemas which are organised systems of knowledge we use to understand the world

  traumatic and negative events in early life may lead to negative automatic thoughts e.g. 'I will always be unsuccessful'

  Beck thought negative schemas lead to errors in logic in that they tend to draw illogical conclusions on the basis of one single event

  Beck suggested these biases and schema maintain the negative triad. this is made up of negative views of the self, of the world and of the future.
• Negative Triad example


  recently unemployed person

  self - 'I'm useless'

  world - 'no-one will want to hire me'

  future - 'I can't be employed again
• Ellis' ABC model


  Ellis suggested an activating event (A) lead to certain beliefs (B) about the event and as a result there's an emotional response or action, the consequence (C)

  Ellis suggested people can have rational beliefs concerning the event and will act rationally and lead to desirable emotions.

  however, abnormality is due to irrational thoughts which may lead to psychological disturbance and behaviour
• ABC model example


  A: fail mock exam

  B: (irrational) 'I can't sit exams'

  B: (rational) ' I need to try harder'

  irrational

  C: (emotion) feelings of worthlessness

  C: (behaviour) leave college

  rational

  C: (emotion) determination

  C: (behaviour) revise more
• Strength - effectiveness of therapies based on approach

  Barlow found Rational Emotive Behavioural Therapy (REBT) was successful in encouraging patients suffering from anxiety or depression to change their thinking patterns and to become more optimistic

  ethical problems -> critics argue cognitive therapists place the blame + responsibility of having a mental illness on the individual

  suggests that the explanation is a valid one based on principles which are evidenced by treatments
• Strength - research into 'learned helplessness'

  Seligman's research into 'learned helplessness' shows animals who could do nothing about their situation 'learned' to be helpless later on when they could do something about their situation

  shows that negative events lead to 'learned helplessness' an inability to engage in purposeful behaviour, characteristic of depression, supports early life events can lead to cognitive distortions + negative schemas

  research showed faulty cognitions associated with depression could be learnt
• Strength - research support by Koster

  Koster et al examined the role of attention to negative stimuli in depression.

  presented depressed + non-depressed ppts with emotional words followed by a dot on a screen + asked them to say when the dot appeared.

  depression ppts -> found it difficult to disengage from negative emotional words - biased towards negative stimuli

  support Beck's cognitive model as it shows that depressed people struggle to disengage from negative stimuli
• Weakness - can't establish cause and effect

  faulty thought processes the cause or effect of depression? it's possible they're just a symptom

  reductionist to assume all abnormal behaviour is caused by faulty thinking. neglects biological factors + unconscious factors may cause the irrational thinking

  model tends to oversimplify

  difficult to establish whether cognitions are the cause or effect of the disorder
• Weakness - can't explain certain depressive symptoms

  emotion of anger isn't well explained by the negative triad + neither are certain hallucinations + delusions

  e.g. Cotard syndrome - belief they're zombies

  not all depressive symptoms occur after a negative event, as Ellis suggests

  neither can account for these symptoms, this makes the theories incomplete as explanations of depression