•Ellis proposed that the key to mental disorders such as depression lay in irrational beliefs
•Their interpretation of events
•The source of irrational beliefs in masturbatory thinking, thinking that certain ideas or assumptions must be true in order for an individual to be happy e.g. I must be approved of by important people
Becks negative triad
•Depressed people have acquired a negative schema (cog framework) during childhood
•Schemas can become distortions, these lead to cognitive biases such as Overgeneralisation - making a sweeping conclusion on the basis of a single event
•Negative schemas, together with cognitive biases, maintain the negative triad (irrational view of the self, world and future)
