CA etiology

Question 1

Intro

Answer 1

Describe Major Depressive Disorder (MDD):
- Must present through the span of two weeks 5 out of 8 symptoms (sadness and lack of motivation, changes in weight/sleeping patterns.
- Etiology: set of factors affecting the development of a mental disorder such as MDD
- Mental schemas that promote the onset of MDD.
-Mental representations that organize our previous experiences and create expectations for new experiences.

Beck Cognitive Theory of depression: identifies negative mental schemas as one factor affecting MDD.

Question 2

Cognitive theory (Beck)

Answer 2

Beck proposes the negative cognitive triad:
-Having a negative view of the self, others, and the future.
Within the perception of the self, there is self blame, ineptness, and negative self evaluation.
-Lead to irrational thinking patterns, which will often persist
despite contrary evidence
- They are biases that assimilate information, including selective abstraction, overgeneralization, all-or-nothing thinking, among others.

-Can develop due to poor childhood
experiences.
- The triggers of these negative schemas can also be seen as potential vulnerabilities for the start of a depressive disorder, specially when they aren’t challenged.

Question 3

Alloy 1999

Answer 3

Aim: investigate if an individual’s thinking patterns played a role in the development of depression.

Participants: Non-depressed students

Procedure:
Students were given a test to measure their cognitive style and were classified as either high risk (HR) or low risk (LR) for depression based on their thinking patterns.

Results:
After 6 years, through questionnaires and structured interviews results showed that participants in the cognitively high risk (HR) group were more likely to develop MDD (17%) than the LR group (1%).

The study showed the influence of negative cognitive thinking styles on the development of depression.

Question 4

Limitations

Answer 4

Replicable
Natural experiment- not a clear cause and effect relationship

Question 5

Joiner et al 1999

Answer 5

Aim: study the role of depressive and anxious thinking patterns in combination with an external stressor on the development of depressive symptoms.

• Natural experiment

Participants: university students

Procedure:
They were given three tests:

DAS: THINKING PATTERNS, TAKEN BEFORE MIDTERMS
CCL: determined
automatic thoughts linked to depression or anxiety, BEFORE AND AFTER
BDI: SYMPTOMS, BEFORE AND AFTER

Results:
- Showed an increase in the scores of BDI only on
students that had a high score on the DAS and who failed an exam.
- Students with a higher
score on the DAS that did well on exams did not exhibit an increase in their BDI score.
- Students who had low scores on the DAS did not experience depressive reactions even if
they received low grades.

Question 6

Applicability

Answer 6

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT):

• Developed by Beck.
• According to the Cognitive etiology for MDD, negative mental schemas bias the way in which we process information through cognitive distortion,
  that means that helping the patients to identify and change their dysfunctional pattern of
  thinking would reduce the symptoms.
• CBT educates patients to reformulate their irrational
  beliefs and negative schemas into more rational ones.

STUDY: HOLLON ET AL
* results: relapse rates of patients receving CBT was lower with 31% than antidepressants with 47% and placebo with 76%.
* suggests that CBT was long-lasting effects as it teaches patients effective coping skills that help change behavior.

Question 7

Limitations

Answer 7

• Does not asses biological factors such as neurotransmitters, therefore reductionist
• No cause effect relationship because it provides correlational data