cognitive approach to explaining depression

• Beck suggested that some people are more prone to depression because of faulty information processing. When depressed people attend to the negative aspects of a situation and ignore positives, they also tend to blow small problems out of proportions. Depressed people have a negative schema so they interpret all information about themselves in a negative way. The 3 elements of the negative triad are:

  • negative view of the world
  • negative fire of future
  • negative view of self
• Ellis' ABC model:

  • A- activating event. Ellis suggested that depression arises from irrational thoughts and negative events
  • B- beliefs. Negative events trigger irrational thoughts, for example, Ellis called the belief that we must always succeed musterbation
  • C- consequences. When activating event triggers irrational beliefs there are emotional and behavioural consequences
• One strength of Beck’s model is supporting research. Clark and Beck concluded that cognitive vulnerabilities are more common in depressed people. A revent prospective study by Cohen et al. tracked 473 adolescents’ development and found that early cognitive vulnerabilities predicted later depression. This shows that there is an association between cognitive vulnerability and depression
• One strength of Beck’s model is real world application to screening for depression. Assessing cognitive vulnerability in young people most at risk of developing depression means they can be monitored. Understanding cognitive vulnerability is applied in CBT to alter cognitions underlying depression, making a person more resilient to life event. This means that the idea of cognitive vulnerability is useful in clinical practice
• One strength of Eliis’ model is its application in treating depression. Ellis applied the ABC model to treat depression therapy can both change negative beliefs and relive the symptoms of depression. This means that rational emotive behaviour therapy has real world value.
• One limitation of Ellis’ model is it only explains reactive depression. Reactive depression describes a form of depression which is triggered by negative activating events. However, in many cases it is not obvious what triggers depression, described as endogenous depression. Ellis’ model is less useful in explaining this. This means that Ellis’ model can only explain some cases of depression