3.6. Depression Explanation- Cognitive Approach

Question 1

What is the emphasis in the cognitive approach?

Answer 1

How thinking shapes our behaviour

Question 2

What are cognitive psychologists most concerned with?

Answer 2

How irrational thinking leads to a mental disorder

Question 3

Why are cognitive explanations most appropriate in explaining and treating depression?

Answer 3

Depression is characterised by negative irrational thinking

Question 4

What are some examples of irrational beliefs?

Answer 4

• I must always achieve perfection
• I must be loved by every significant other
• My past history determines my present behaviour

Question 5

What did Ellis propose?

Answer 5

The key to mental disorders such as depression lay in irrational beliefs

Question 6

What does Ellis’ ABC model comprise of?

Answer 6

A: Activating event

B: Belief -> may be rational or irrational

C: Consequence -> irrational beliefs lead to unhealthy emotions

Question 7

What is musturbatory thinking?

Answer 7

The source of the irrational belief that certain things must be true for an individual to be happy

Question 8

What were the 3 most important irrational beliefs that Ellis identified?

Answer 8

• I must be approved of or accepted by people I find important
• I must do well, or very well, or I am worthless
• The world must give me happiness or I will die

Question 9

What needs to happen in order for mental health to prevail?

Answer 9

Such musts need to be challenged

Question 10

What did Beck suggest?

Answer 10

Some people are cognitively more vulnerable to developing depression, believing that 3 factors create a ‘cognitive vulnerability’ to depression

Question 11

What 3 factors create the cognitive vulnerability?

Answer 11

• Negative self schemas
• Faulty info processing
• The negative triad

Question 12

What are schemas

Answer 12

A package of ideas and info developed through past experience

Question 13

What are self schemas?

Answer 13

A package of information we hold about ourselves

Question 14

When do we use these schemas?

Answer 14

When we interpret the world and therefore, if we have a negative self schema, we will interpret all info about ourselves negatively

Question 15

When are negative self schemas acquired?

Answer 15

In childhood and activated in conditions resembling those in which they were learned

Question 16

What kind of childhood events could lead to negative self schemas?

Answer 16

• Loss of a parent
• Rejection by peers
• Criticism by parents
• Physical abuse
• Emotional abuse

Question 17

What is faulty information procession?

Answer 17

Info processing of depressed individuals is cognitively biased which makes them more prone to depression and once depressed, these thoughts make it difficult to get better.

Question 18

What is the negative triad?

Answer 18

Beck believed that depressed individuals feel as they do because their thinking is biased towards negative interpretations of the world and they lack a perceived sense of control

Negative views about the world -> negative views about the future, negative views about oneself

Negative views about the future <—-> Negative views about oneself

Question 19

How is the negative triad maintained?

Answer 19

Through negative self schemas and cognitive biases -> a pessimistic and irrational view of three key elements in a personal beliefs system

Question 20

What are the three key elements in a personal beliefs system?

Answer 20

• the self
• the world
• the future

Question 21

Strength: research supports the role of irrational thinking

Answer 21

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