Depression

• Overview

  Depression is a mood disorder characterised by extreme sadness. To be diagnosed with major depression, the DSM states an individual must experience at least 5 from a list of symptoms including; one of depressed mood and/or loss of interest or pleasure in most

  activities
• Emotional Characteristics 


  Depressed mood, loss of interest and pleasure, worthlessness
• Cognitive characteristics


  Reduced concentration, negative beliefs about the self, suicidal thoughts
• Behavioural characteristics


  Change in activity, Social impairment, change in eating and sleeping patterns
• Beck - negative triad


  the self, the world, the future - negative self schemas and cognitive biases
• Ellis ABC model


  Activating event, Belief about why this happened, Consequences of this belief
• Strength of Cognitive Explanation


  There is a wealth of research to support Beck’s cognitive explanation. Koster et al’s study used student volunteers who took part in an attention task and were

  presented with positive, negative and neutral words. They found that depressed participants spent longer attending to the negative words than the non-depressed group.
• Limitation of Cognitive explanation


  Cause or effect – it is difficult to determine the extent to which distorted cognitive pattern’s

  cause depression.
• CBT


  Thought catching and cognitive restructuring
• Ellis’ Rational Emotive Behavioural Therapy

  • Empirical disputing involves the depressed client asking themselves are the beliefs consistent with reality
  • Logical disputing is where the therapist questions whether the irrational beliefs follow on coherently
  • Pragmatic disputing is where the depressed client questions the usefulness of thenegative thoughts
• Effectiveness of CBT


  competence of the therapist appears to explain a significant amount of variation in CBT outcomes
• Appropriateness of CBT


  a criticism of the appropriateness of CBT it is difficult to predict which

  clients will respond well to CBT, individual differences, idiographic approach needed