Depression

• Depression

  What is the cognitive approach?

  Behaviours occur because of cognitions therefore mental illness is caused by irrational and negative thought process

  Humans are seen as information processors and info is received from our sense and processes in our minds, this processing affects how we behave, abnormal processing causes mental illness.

  Individual is in control, thoughts cause the abnormality and they must change.
• Ellis' ABC Model ( 1962 )

  • proposed that depression lays in irrational thoughts 
  • A - activating event
  • B - belief - ir/rational 
  • C - consequence - where irrational beliefs lead to unhealthy emotions
• Musturbatory Thinking 

  Source of irrational beliefs lies in MT - thinking that certain ideas or assumptions must be true in order for an individual to be happy, Ellis identified the three most important irrational beliefs such as ‘I must do well or I am worthless’, ‘I must be approved by people I find important’

  • If you have failed an exam becomes depressed because they hold an irrational belief regarding that failure.
• Beck's negative triad


  Depressed individuals feel as they do because their thinking is biased towards negative interpretations and they lack a perceived sense of control
• Negative schema

  Depressed people acquire this during childhood - tendency to adopt a negative view of the world as this may be caused by a variety of factors, including parental/peer rejection and criticisms by teachers
• Negative schemas are activated whenever the person encounters a new situation that resembles the original condition in which the schemas are learned
• Cognitive biases in thinking of depressed people


  • Overgeneralisation by regarding self-worth on a small piece of negative feedback
• 1. Pessimistic and irrational view of three key elements in a person's belief system
  2. Self 
  3. 2. World
  4. 3. Future

  Schema cognitive framework that helps organise and interpret new information and schemas help us make sense of new information.
• Evaluation:

  Client responsible?

  Blames client rather than situational factors, cognitive approach suggests that client is responsible for their disorder, however placing of emphasis is a good thing ad it gives the client power to change the way things are, however has limitations such as client or therapist overlooking situational factors such as not considering life events and family problems which may have contributed to the mental disorder. 
• Cognitive approach lies focus on client’s mind but other aspects of their life environment may need to be considered.
• Irrational beliefs may be realistic

  Cognitive approach doesn’t take into account that thoughts may seem irrational but really aren’t, Alloy and Abramson ( 1979 ) suggest that depressive realists tend to see things for what they are ( normal people view world through ‘rose-coloured’ glasses ), they found that depressed people gave more accurate estimates of likelihood of a disaster than ‘normal’ controls, this is called the ‘sadder but wiser effect’, doubts about whether irrational thinking really is irrational raise questions about the value of the cognitive approach.
• Is there an alternative explanation?

  Biological approach to understanding mental disorder suggests that genes and neurotransmitters may cause depression, research by Zhang et al. 2005 supports that the role of low serotonin in depressed people and has also found a gene related to this is 10 times more common in depressed people.
• Drug therapies for treating depression do suggest that neurotransmitter do play an important role in helping clients, a diathesis-stress approach may be considered, suggesting that individuals with a genetic vunerability for depression are more prone to the effects of living in a negative al, which then leads to irrational thinking
• Existence of an alternative approach and effective therapies suggests that depression can’t be explained and relied on by the cognitive approach on its own
• Application to therapy

  Cognitive explanations have been applied to CBT, which is consistently found to be the best treatment for depression especially when in conjunction to drug treatments - Cujipers et al ( 2003 ) - Usefulness of CBT supports cognitive approach and its effectiveness - if depression is alleviated by challenging irrational thinking, then this suggests such thoughts had such a role in the depression in the first place.