Cognitive Approach: Explaining Depression Flashcards
What does the cognitive model assume?
-Cognitions direct behaviour
-Depression is the result of disordered thinking
What did Beck find about depressed people?
-Tend to draw illogical conclusions when evaluating themselves
-Such negative thoughts lead to negative feelings which result in depression
-There are 3 main components of Beck’s negative triad:
-schemas
-cognitive biases
-negative triad
What are schemas?
-Organised systems of knowledge used to understand and interpret the world, relating to how we see ourselves
-Depressed people may have experienced trauma in early life which can lead to the development of negative schemata
-Negative schemas are activated when they encounter a situation that resembles original conditions of when schemas were learned
-When negative schemata is activated it leads to automatic negative thoughts, leading to interpretation bias which prevents them seeing the positive side of things
What are cognitive biases?
Minimisation: Bias towards minimising success e.g. attributing a good exam result to luck
Maximisation: Bias towards maximising importance of even trivial failures e.g. failing to complete a puzzle as a sign of general stupidity
What is the negative triad?
Schemas and cognitive biases maintain a pessimistic and irrational view of 3 elements in their belief system:
-The self
-The world
-The future
What was Ellis’ ABC model?
-Suggested good mental health is the result of rational thinking
-Depression is a result of irrational thinking = defined not as illogical or unrealistic but as any thoughts that interfere with being happy and pain free
-A = activating event
-B = beliefs
-C = consequence
What are activating events?
-Depression caused by experiences of negative events which trigger irrational beliefs e.g. failing important test, ending relationship
What is meant by beliefs in ABC model?
-Identified a range of irrational beliefs
-‘Musturbation’ ideas or beliefs must be true in order to be happy
e.g. individual who fails exam isn’t depressed because they failed but because they hold an irrational belief regarding failure
What is meant by consequences in ABC model?
-When an activating event triggers irrational beliefs there are emotional and behavioural consequences
e.g. belief that you must always succeed and then failing can trigger depression
What are 2 strengths of the cognitive approach?
Support from research studies:
-Range of evidence associated with faulty thinking processing and cognitive triad
-Grazioli and Terry assessed 65 pregnant women for cognitive vulnerability before and after birth
-Found women judged with high vulnerability were more likely to suffer post-natal depression
-Clarke and Beck reviewed research on this topic and concluded there was solid support for cognitive vulnerability factors
Suggests Beck may be right about cognition causing depression
Positive applications for therapy:
-Explanations have both been applied to CBT.
-CBT is consistently found to be best treatment for depression especially when used with drugs
-Explanations are useful as have specific implications for success of therapy and the therapy supports the explanation
If depression is alleviated by challenging irrational thinking then this suggests such thoughts had a role in depression in first place
What are 2 limitations of the cognitive approach?
Negative thoughts could be a symptom rather than a cause of depression:
-Studies show depressed people do show more negative thinking however there is no convincing evidence that negative thinking causes depression
-Biological approach to understanding depression suggests genes and neurotransmitters may cause disorder e.g. research supports role of genes and low level neurotransmitters
-Success of therapies based on increasing levels suggests they do play an imp role
Therefore we need to be careful using cognitive approach to depression as may not actually explain origins of condition and just describes symptoms instead
Only explains certain types of depression:
-Depression is more complex than basic symptoms outlined in theories
-Some are deeply angry, some suffer hallucinations and bizarre beliefs
-Ellis proposes depression must have a situational trigger before activated
However in a lot of cases people suffer depression without obvious cause. This means Beck and Ellis’ explanations only apply to some kinds of depression and therefore is only a partial explanation
