depression

• A strength of the cognitive explanation for depression is its application to therapy. The cognitive ideas have been used to develop effective treatments for depression, including CBT and REBT which was developed from Ellis's ABC model.

  These therapies attempt to identify and challenge negative thoughts and have successfully been used to treat people with depression.
• Cohen et al. (2019) supported Beck's findings as they tracked the development of 473 adolescents, regularly measuring cognitive vulnerability and found that it predicted later depression.

  CBT can then be offered and may help to alter the kinds of cognitions that make people vulnerable to depression.

  This means that an understanding of cognitive vulnerability is useful in more than one aspect of clinical practice.
• Both explanations suggest that cognitions cause depression. This is linked to the idea of cognitive primacy, which suggests that emotions are influenced by one's cognitions. However, other theories of depression suggest that sometimes emotions influence cognitions.

  And so, a weakness of the approach is that it doesn't explain the origins of irrational thoughts and most of the research in this area is correlational. Therefore, it is unclear as to whether negative thoughts cause depression or depression leads to a negative mindset.
• It is possible that other factors, such as genes and neurotransmitters, are the cause of depression and one of the side effects is negative thoughts.

  Research into the biological explanation has found that low levels of serotonin are linked to depression. This can be treated with drug therapies such as, SSRIs, which increase the levels of serotonin and are found to be effective in treating depression.

  This supports the role of neurotransmitters in the development of depression.
• Furthermore, both cognitive explanations cannot explain all of the symptoms of depression. For example, some depressed patients are deeply angry and some suffer hallucinations. The explanations cannot easily explain these cases.

  This suggests that it is only a partial explanation and does not explain all aspects of depression. And so, an alternative explanation such as the biological approach may be more appropriate.
• Some cases of depression follow activating events which is named by psychologists as reactive depression. This is different from the kind of depression that arises without an obvious cause.

  Ellis' ABC model only explains reactive depression and not endogenous depression. Endogenous depression does not have an obvious cause or are not traceable to life events.

  This means that this theory is not applicable to every individual's experience of depression and it can only explain some cases and so is only a partial explanation.
• The ABC model is criticised for locating responsibility for depression purely with the depressed person. The theory may lead the client or therapist to overlook situational factors e.g., how family problems may have contributed disorder.

  However, this can be viewed positively as it gives the client power to change the way things are. REBT does appear to make at least some achieve more resilience and feel better.

  The strength of the cognitive approach is that it focuses on the client's mind and recovery, but other aspects of the client's environment and life may also need to be considered.
• There is supporting evidence for the idea that depression is associated with faulty informational processing, negative self-schemas and the negative triad.

  Boury et al. (2001) found that patients with depression were more likely to misinterpret information negatively (cognitive bias) and feel hopeless about their future (negative triad), which supports different components of Beck's theory and the idea that cognitions are involved in depression.
• Another research study assessed pregnant women for cognitive vulnerability and depression before and after birth. They found that those high in cognitive vulnerability were more likely to suffer from post-natal depression.