The cognitive approach suggests that depression results from faulty cognition processing and negative thinking about events (so disturbances in thinking)
Schemas
Mental framework for objects and events that work as shortcuts in understanding the world
Includes schemas about ourselves
Depression can result from our self-schemas being negative
Beck's negative triad
Events are seen by the sufferer with a pessimistic/negative bias due to the development of negative schemas about the world, the self, and the future
Negative schemas
Can lead to overgeneralisation
Magnification of problems
Selective perception
Absolutist thinking
Ellis' ABC model
Activating event (A) is the external situation that there will be a reaction to
Belief (B) is why the individual thinks that the activating event happened (rational or irrational)
Consequence (C) is the behaviour and emotions caused by the person's beliefs about the activating event
In depression the activating event is blamed for the unhappiness felt
Musturbatory thinking
Thinking in absolutes and that the world must be a certainway for us
Ellis' ABC model
Ellis proposed that it is not the activating event itself that directly leads to emotional and behaviouralconsequences, but rather the beliefs and thoughts associated with it
Reductionism: Ellis' ABC model
only explains reactive depression and not persistentdepressivedisorder
Thus is because reactive depression is depression triggered by lifeevents while depression in PDD is not traceable to lifeevents and it's not obvious what leads the person to become depressed at a particulartime
So, can only explain somecases of depression therefore the ABC model is reductionist
Limitation: Ellis' ABC Model
The ABC model can be criticised as being a simplisticrepresentation of depression. It does not fully account for other factors that contribute to depression, such as geneticpredispositions, environmentalinfluences, and physiologicalaspects.