Explaining depression

• What is Beck's cognitive approach to explaining depression?

  • Approach focuses on how irrational thinking and beliefs leads to depression rather than their behaviour
  • Results from systematic negative biases
  • Depressed patients think differently to clinically normal people because they have cognitive abnormalities
• What are cognitive biases or faulty information processing?

  • Making fundamental errors in logic and selectively attend to the negative aspects of a situation, ignoring positive biases
  • e.g. minimisation is the bias towards minimising success in life - limiting enjoyment and satisfaction from successful achievements and leads to low self-esteem
• What are negative self-schemas?

  • A negative package of information about themselves, leading to the individual interpreting all incoming data regarding themselves in a negative way
  • Mainly formed in childhood as a result of bullying/abuse from family or parents
  • LEADS to faulty information processing
• What is Beck's negative triad?

  • How a person develops a dysfunctional view about themselves because of 3 types of automatic negative thinking:
  • Negative view of the self
  • Negative view of the world
  • Negative view of the future
• How did Ellis explain depression?

  • Proposed that good mental health is the result of rational thinking - in ways that allow people to be happy and free from pain
  • Depression + anxiety are results of irrational thoughts that interfere with the above
  • Believes that common irrational beliefs underlie much depression
• What is Ellis' ABC model?

  • Activating event
  • Beliefs
  • Consequences
• What is an activating event?

  • External negative events that trigger irrational thoughts and leads to depression
• What are the 3 irrational beliefs? What are consequences?

  • 'Musturbation': belief that we must always succeed or achieve perfection
  • 'I-can't-stand-it-itis': belief that whenever things don't go smoothly it is a major disaster
  • Utopianism: belief that life is always meant to be fair
  • Consequences: irrational beliefs lead to unhealthy emotional and behavioural outcomes
• What is one strength of Beck's negative triad in explaining depression?

  • Research support: cognitive vulnerabilities refer to ways of thinking that may predispose a person to becoming depressed
  • Clark and Beck (1999) concluded in a review that not only were these more common in depressed people but PRECEDED it
  • Grazioli and Terry (2000): assessed 65 pregnant women - those who had preceding cognitive vulnerabilities were more likely to suffer from post-natal depression
  • Shows explanation is likely to be accurate, associating cognitive vulnerabilities with depression
• What is another strength of Beck's negative triad in explaining depression?

  • Real-world application: screening and treating depression
  • Cohen et al. (2019) tracked the development of 473 adolescents and found that cognitive vulnerability predicted later depression
  • Allows psychologists to screen young people and identify those most at risk of developing depression, monitoring them and providing intervention when necessary to avoid poor outcomes
  • Means understanding cognitive vulnerabilities is useful in more than one aspect of clinical practice
• What is one limitation of Beck's negative triad in explaining depression?

  • Partial explanation: there are some aspects to depression that are not particularly well explained by cognitive explanations
  • For example, some behavioural aspects like extreme anger and low self-esteem, and some people experience hallucinations and delusions
  • Shows it is limited in the sense that it does not cover all elements of depression in every patient
• What is one strength of Ellis' ABC model in explaining depression?

  • Research support: Newark et al. (2016) asked a group of people with anxiety and a group of people without if they agreed with 2 completely irrational statements
  • 80% of anxious people agreed with one of them, as opposed to 0% of the control group, showing that people with emotional problems think in irrational ways, supporting Ellis' model
  • HOWEVER because groups had anxiety we cannot fully conclude its' support - doesn't account for depression
• What is another strength of Ellis' ABC model in explaining depression?

  • Real-world application: model has contributed to the development of rational emotive behaviour therapy (REBT)
  • Characterised by vigorously arguing with a depressed person aiming to alter the irrational beliefs causing their unhappiness
  • David et al. (2018) argues it can relieve the symptoms of depression by changing negative beliefs its' real-world value
• What is one limitation of Ellis' ABC model in explaining depression?

  • Reactive and endogenous depression: Ellis' model only explains reactive depression which is caused by external factors and not endogenous depression which is caused by internal factors like imbalances in our biochemical processes
  • Many cases of depression aren't traceable to real-life events meaning it is not obvious what leads to the person becoming depressed at a particular time, which Ellis' model is less useful in explaining meaning it is a partial explanation