Depression

• Depression is a mood effective disorder that is a collection of physical, emotional, mental and behavioural experiences that are damaging to everyday functioning.
• The criteria for depression to be diagnosed are:

  1. Behavioural- How you behave when your depressed (energy levels low)
  2. Emotional- How you feel when your depressed (feelings of worthlessness)
  3. Cognitive- How you think when your depressed. (lack of concentration)
• Becks negative triad is three forms of thinking that are observed in people with depression.

  1. The self- Viewing yourself as worthless
  2. The world- Interpret events in the world as inherently negative
  3. The future- Nothing good is waiting for your in the future
• A negative schema are inherently negative beliefs about the world around you formed by a poor childhood.
• Cognitive biases are distortions of thought processes, focusing only on the negatives and ignoring the positives.
• According to Ellis, depression is produced by irrational thoughts triggered by events.
• A)Activating agent (An event occur)

  B) Belief (Your interpretation of the event)

  C)Consequence (Your emotional outcome)
• In C.B.T (Cognitive, Behavioural Therapy) the therapist makes the client aware of the relationship between thought, emotion, action.

  Strength: Effective in reducing symptoms and relapse.

  Limitation: If client is too depressed, they wont want to engage.
• In REBT (Rational, Emotive, Behavioural Therapy) the therapist helps the client replace their irrational beliefs with new, more rational ones.

  A representation of this is the extended ABC model.

  D)Dispute thoughts (Disagree with your thoughts)

  E)Effect (Replace those thoughts with something more rational)
• Recovery using drugs alone = 55%

  Recovery with C.B.T alone = 52%

  Recovery using both drugs and C.B.T =85%
• Example of cognitive distortions are Catastrophising (exaggerating the negative) and over-generalisation (having 1 bad experience and generalising it to the rest of your life)