depression cognitive explanation

• Ellis

  • depression is caused by irrational beliefs
  • ABC model
  • musturbatory thinking
  • three key musturbatory thoughts
• Ellis ABC model

  • A - activating event
  • B - belief the event has led to
  • C - consequences of this belief
• musturbatory thinking:

  • the source of irrational beliefs
  • thinking that certain assumptions must be true in order to be happy
• Ellis' key 3 musturbatory thoughts

  • i must be approved by people i find important
  • i must do well or i am worthless
  • the world must give me happiness or i will die
• Beck

  • depression is caused by negative thinking
  • negative schemas
  • cognitive triad
• negative schemas

  • depressed people acquire negative schemas from events in childhood, which gives them a tendency to adopt negative views of the world
  • negative schemas will activate in events similar to the original activating event
  • negative schemas lead to systematic cognitive biases in thinking
• Beck's cognitive triad

  • negative schemas and cognitive bias maintain the cognitive triad
  • a pessimistic and irrational view of 3 elements in a belief system
  • the self: i am terrible
  • the world: the world is terrible
  • the future: i have no future
• (+) research support for irrational thinking

  • study found depressed participants became more depressed after reading negative automatic thought statements
• (-) irrational beliefs may be realistic

  • study found that depressed people give more accurate estimates of disaster likelihood, people with depression may be realists, and not be irrational
  • C/A: another study found that depressed participants made more errors in logic when interpreting written information than non-depressed participants
• (+) success of therapy

  • CBT success rate of up to 90%
  • SOTIVOT
  • C/A: 10% unsuccessful, suggests not all depression caused by cognitive errors