cognitive approach to explaining depression

• Cognitive approach


  Depression is due to irrational thoughts, resulting from maladaptive internal mental processes.
• Schema


  Mental frameworks/expectations based on experience. Schemes allow us to quickly process large amounts of sensory information and make automatic assumptions and responses. Negative schemas result in automatically negative cognitive biases.
• Beck's negative triad 


  Three schemas with a persistent automatic negative bias.

  The self: aka self-schemas, feeling 'inadequate or unworthy'

  The world: thinking people are 'hostile or threatening'.

  The future: thinking 'things will always turn out badly'.

  This can lead to avoidance, social withdrawal and inaction.
• Beck's negative triad - cognitive disortions


  The negative triad develops in childhood but provides the framework for persistent biases in adulthood, leading to cognitive distortions, perceiving the world inaccurately.

  Overgeneralisation: one negative experience results in an assumption that the same thing will always happen.

  Selective abstraction: mentally filtering out positive experiences and focusing on the negative.
• Ellis's ABC model


  A: activating event - can be anything that happens to someone.

  B: belief - for people without depression, beliefs about A are rational. People with depression have irrational beliefs.

  C: consequence - rational beliefs lead to positive consequences; irrational beliefs lead to negative consequences.
• Ellis's ABC model - mustabatory thinking


  The consequence of not accepting we don't live in a perfect world.

  The fact that we fail to achieve unrealistic goals, other people don't behave the way we want them to, or an unexpected event happens and ruins our plans leads to disappointment.
• + Supporting evidence


  E - Grazioli and Terry: Pregnant women who demonstrated dysfunctional and vulnerable cognitive thinking were more likely to develop post-natal depression than those without cognitive warning signs

  E - Cognition is a good indicator of depression, and can explain the development of depression.

  L -The approach has validity as it highlights the impact of faulty thought processes.
• + Practical applications


  E - Rational Emotive Therapy - The therapist challenges the irrational thought processes of the client to turn them into rational ones.

  E - This treatment has been found to have a 90% success rate.

  L - If the treatment, based on the cognitive theory, is effective, the theory must have validity
• + Acknowledges free will


  E - It believes that humans, to a certain extent, have some control over their thought processes and therefore their actions.

  E - Empowering someone with depression as they can influence and control their symptoms in someway.

  L - However, it attributes blame and could be interpreted as suggesting that people are only depressed due to their own cognitive processes, which could impact their mental health.
• / Alternative explanations


  E - Zhang found that low serotonin levels, which attribute to depression, were due to the human tryptophan hydroxylase-2 gene.

  E - Biological link that the cognitive approach does not suggest.

  L - Therefore, this shows there is other biological factors which may influence depression and it is not just down to cognitive factors