Depression

• What is Depression?

  A mood disorder that can be divided into unipolar (one state of low mood, suicidal thoughts) and bipolar (alternates between low mood and euphoria)
• Behavioural, Emotional and Cognitive characteristics of Depression


  Behavioural - activity levels, reduced levels of energy

  - disruption to sleep + eating behaviour, experiences reduced sleep (insomnia), appetite may increase or decrease

  Emotional - lowered mood, often describes themselves as worthless

  - loss of enthusiasm

  - lowered self-esteem low self worth

  Cognitive - poor concentration, unable to stick with a task or simple tasks will be difficult

  - dwelling on the negative, pessimism
• Cognitive Approach explaining Depression - Becks Cognitive theory

  More vulnerable to depression because they think in negative ways

  • Faulty Information Processing - depressed people dwell on the negative aspects of a situation and blow small problems out of proportion
  • Negative self schemas - developed during childhood because of parental rejection or harsh criticism
  • Negative triad - negative view of the world, future and self esteem. Concentrates on the processing info relevant to it and ignore more positive info, leading to reinforcement of negative beliefs, maintaining the depression
• Cognitive Approach explaining Depression - Ellis' ABC Model

  Irrational thoughts are triggered by negative external events e.g failed a test so triggers irrational beliefs.

  Irrational beliefs take several forms:

  • musterbation is the belief that we must always succeed
  • 'i-can't-stand-it-itis' is the belief it's a disaster when things don't go smoothly
  • Utopianism is the belief that the world must always be fair and just
• Cognitive Approach explaining Depression - Ellis' ABC Model


  A - activating event - the event we encounter e.g being told by your boss that they're unhappy with your work

  B - belief - what you believe is the truth about the event e.g I'm a failure

  C - consequent emotion e.g anxiety, depression
• Evaluation of Cognitive explanation for Depression

  + Supporting evidence - Alloy identified students, either optimistic or hopeless thinkers. After 2 years, 1% of optimistic thinkers developed depression compared to 17% of hopeless thinkers. This shows that negative thinking leads to depression

  X Cause and effect issue - evidence of link between negative thoughts and cognitions is correlational, not causal, negative thinking could be symptom of depression, not a cause of depression. This has implications for cognitive therapies as it tends to assume negative thinking triggers depression
• Cognitive Approach to Treating Depression

  Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) - deals with thinking e.g challenge negative thoughts. It aims to:

  • examine beliefs underlying the unhappiness
  • challenge irrational thoughts and replace with more positive ones
• Cognitive Approach to Treating Depression- CBT (Beck)


  Steps include:

  1. Identification of negative thoughts - determines a baseline to monitor and improve
  2. Generate hypothesis to test thoughts - e.g 'I always fail', they will be asked whether, in reality, they have been successful
  3. Patient as scientist - involves gathering data like a diary
  4. Reinforcement of positive thoughts
  5. Cognitive restructuring - overtime, irrational thoughts are replaced by more rational beliefs
• Evaluation of CBT

  + Effective - March compared effects at 3 different treatment methods - CBT, antidepressants and a combination in 327 depressed adolescents, 36 weeks the improvement rates were: CBT - 81%, Antidepressant - 81%, Combined - 86%. This suggests CBT is just as effective as other methods, especially when combined

  X May not work for most severe cases - not be motivated to take on the hard cognitive work for CBT. This is a limitation because it can't be used as the sole treatment for depression