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Pyschopathology > Deppression > Flashcards

Deppression Flashcards

1
Q

5 Categories of Depression

A
  • Major depressive disorder: severe but often short-term depression
    • Persistent depressive disorder: long-term / recurring depression, including sustained major depression
    • Disruptive mood dysregulation disorder: childhood temper tantrums
    • Premenstrual dysphoric disorder: disruption to mood prior to and/or during menstruation
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2
Q

Characteristics of depression

A
  • behavioural charecteristics
  • emotional charecteristics
  • cognitive charecteristic
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3
Q

Behavioural characteristics

A

• ways in which people act
• Change in activity levels
• Disruption to sleep and eating behaviour
• Aggression and self-harm

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4
Q

Emotional characteristics

A

ways in which people feel
• Lowered mood
• Anger
• Lowered self-esteem

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5
Q

Cognitive characteristics

A

• ways in which people process information
• Poor concentration

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6
Q

Affects of depression

A
  • activity levels
  • distruption to sleep and eating behaviours
  • aggression and self harm
  • lowered mood
  • anger
  • lowered self esteem
  • poor concentration
  • dwell on the negative
  • absolutist thinking
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7
Q

Examples of activity levels

A

Energy levels may reduce, leading to withdrawal from work, education and social life
• In extreme cases, the sufferer may not be able to get out of bed
• Occasionally, opposite effect - psychomotor agitation - individual struggles to relax and may end up pacing up and down a room

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8
Q

Examples to distruption to sleep and eating

A

• Reduced sleep (insomnia) and premature waking, or an increased need for sleep (hypersomnia)
• Appetite / eating may also increase or decrease, leading to weight changes

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9
Q

Examples to aggression and self harm

A
  • Irritability, physical / verbal aggression
    • Can lead to relationships ending or quitting a job
    • Physical aggression may be directed towards self (self-harm and suicide attempts)
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10
Q

Examples to lowered mood

A
  • More than just feeling lethargic and sad
    • Patients often describe themselves as ‘worthless’ and ‘empty’
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11
Q

Examples to anger

A

• Can be directed at the self or others
• On occasion, such emotions lead to aggressive or self-harming behaviour

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12
Q

Examples to lowered self esteem

A
  • Sufferers of depression tend to like themselves less than usual
    • May describe a sense of self-loathing, i.e. hating themselves
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13
Q

Examples of poor concentration

A
  • Find it hard to stick with a task or make decisions they would normally find straightforward
    • Likely to interfere with the individual’s work
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14
Q

Examples to dwelling on the negatives

A

• Sufferers pay more attention to negative aspects of a situation and
ignore the positives (glass half-empty)
• Have a bias towards recalling unhappy events rather than happy ones

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15
Q

Examples to absolutist thinking

A

• Situations are either all-good or all-bad (‘Black and white thinking’)
• This means that when a situation is unfortunate, they tend to see it as an absolute disaster

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16
Q

What are the 2 cognitive explanations

A

Beck’s cognitive theory of depression
• Faulty information processing
• Negative self-schemas
• The negative triad
Ellis’s ABC Model
• Activating event
• Beliefs
• Consequences

17
Q

What does Beck’s cognitive theory of depression involve

A

• Faulty information processing
• Negative self-schemas
• The negative triad

18
Q

What does Ellis’s abc model involve

A
  • Activating event
    • Beliefs
    • Consequences
19
Q

What is the cognitive approach

A
  • ‘Cognitive’ = mental processes
    • How our thoughts, perceptions and attention affect behaviour
20
Q

Summary of beck’s cognitive theory

A

• Beck (1967) suggested a cognitive approach to explaining why some people are more vulnerable to depression than others
• In particular, it is a person’s cognitions (the way they think) that create this vulnerability
• Beck suggested 3 parts to this cognitive vulnerability:
Faulty information processing
Negative self-schemas
The negative triad

21
Q

What is faulty information processing

A

• When depressed, we attend to the negative aspects of a situation and ignore positives
• We also tend to blow small problems out of proportion and think in
‘black and white’ terms

22
Q

What is negative self schema

A

• Schema = ‘package’ of ideas and information developed through experience
• Act as a mental framework for the interpretation of sensory information
• A self-schema is the package of information we have about ourselves
• We use schemas to interpret the world, so if we have a negative self-schema, we interpret all information about ourselves in a negative way

23
Q

What is the negative triad

A

A person develops a dysfunctional view of themselves through 3 things
1) Negative view of the world:
“the world is a cold, hard place”
• There is no hope
2) Negative view of the future
• “the economy will not get better”
• Reduces hopefulness
3) Negative view of the self
“I am a failure”
• Enhances existing depressive feelings because it confirms existing emotions of low

24
Q

Pros to becks cognitive theory

A

+ Supporting evidence
• Grazioli and Terry (2000) assessed 65 pregnant women for cognitive vulnerability and depression before and after birth. They found that those women judged to have been high in cognitive vulnerability were more likely to suffer post-natal depression.
• Clark and Beck (1999) concluded that there was solid support for all these cognitive vulnerability factors. Critically, these cognitions can be seen before depression develops.
• Suggests that Beck may be right about cognition causing depression, providing validity to the explanation
+ Practical application
• Beck’s cognitive explanation forms the basis of cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT)
• All cognitive aspects of depression can be identified and challenged in
CBT, including the components of the negative triad that are easily identifiable
• This means that a therapist can challenge them and encourage the patient to test whether they are true
• Therefore, there is a human benefit in successful treatment as a result of Beck’s theory

25
Q

Cons to beck’s cognitive theory

A
  • It doesn’t explain all symptoms
    • Some depressed patients are deeply angry, which Beck does not explain
    • Some sufferers of depression suffer hallucinations and bizarre beliefs
    • Occasionally, depressed patients suffer Cotard syndrome, the delusion that they are zombies (Jarrett, 2013)
  • Blames the patient
    • For example, the cognitive approach suggests disorders are simply in the patient’s mind
    • This is a problem because this can lead to further negative self-schema, and the individual may delay seeking treatment
  • Beck’s theory is reductionist
    • While there is support for the role of faulty cognition in the development of depression, cognitive approaches do not consider all perspectives
    • This weakens the claim that cognition is the primary cause of depression
26
Q

Summmary of Ellis abc model

A

• Ellis (1962) suggested a different cognitive explanation of depression
• He proposed that good mental health is the result of rational thinking, defined as thinking in ways that allow people to be happy and free of pain
• To Ellis, conditions like anxiety and depression (poor mental health) result from irrational thoughts (any thoughts that interfere with us being happy or free of pain)
• Ellis used the ABC model to explain how irrational thoughts affect our

27
Q

What is the activating event

A

• irrational thoughts are triggered by external events
• According to Ellis, we get depressed when we experience negative events, and these trigger irrational beliefs
• Events like failing an important test or ending a relationship might trigger irrational beliefs

28
Q

What is the belief

A

• Ellis identified a range of irrational beliefs
• He called the belief that we must always succeed or achieve perfection
‘musturbation’
• I-can’t-stand-it-itis’ is the belief that it is a major disaster whenever something does not go smoothly
• ‘Utopianism’ is the belief that life is always meant to be fair

29
Q

What is the consequence

A

When an activating event triggers irrational beliefs there are emotional and behavioural consequences
• For example, if you believe you must always succeed and then fail at something, this can trigger depression

30
Q

Positive of Ellis abc model

A

+ Practical application
has led to a successful therapy
REBT
• There is evidence that shows, by challenging irrational negative beliefs, a person can reduce their depression (Lipsky et al., 1980)
• This supports the theory because it suggests that the irrational beliefs had some role in depression

31
Q

Drawbacks of using ellis abc model

A
  • Correlational issues
    • does not explain the origins of irrational thoughts and most of the research in this area is correlational.
  • A partial explanation
    explanation only applies to some kinds of depression
  • It doesn’t explain all aspects of depression
    • It doesn’t easily explain the anger associated with depression or the fact that some patients suffer hallucinations and delusions
  • Ellis’ theory is reductionist
    cognitive approaches do not consider all perspectives
    • There is evidence to suggest that depression runs in families, yet the role of biology has been ignored in this explanation
    • This weakens the claim that cognition is the primary cause of depression
32
Q

What is CBT ( cognitive approach to treating depression)

A

• A method for treating mental disorders based on both cognitive and behavioural techniques
aims to deal with thinking, such as challenging negative thoughts
• The therapy also includes behavioural techniques such as behavioural activation

33
Q

What is the procedure of CBT

A

• Patient and therapist work together to clarify the patient’s problems
• They jointly identify goals for the therapy and put together a plan to achieve them
• identify where there might be negative or irrational thoughts that will benefit from challenge
• CBT then involves working to change the negative/irrational thoughts and finally put more effective behaviours into place

34
Q

What is becks cbt procedure like

A
  • Identify automatic thoughts about the world, self and future - the negative triad
    • These thoughts are then challenged
    • Aims to help patients test the reality of their negative beliefs
    • Might be set homework such as recording when they enjoyed an event or when people were nice to them
35
Q

What is Ellis’s cbt procedure like

A

• REBT extends the ABC model to include D (dispute) and E (effect)
• The central technique of REBT is to identify and dispute irrational thoughts
• E.g. a patient may talk about how unlucky they are or how unfair things seem
• An REBT therapist would identify these as examples of utopianism and challenge this as an irrational belief
• This would involve a vigorous argument, with the intended effect being to change the belief and break the link between negative life events and depression

36
Q

What is behavioural activation

A

therapist may also work to encourage a depressed patient to be more active and engage in enjoyable activities

37
Q

Positives about cbt

A

+ It is effective
• March et al. (2007) compared the effects of CBT with antidepressants and a combination of the 2 in 327 adolescents with a main diagnosis of depression. After 36 weeks, 81% of the CBT group, 81% of the antidepressants group, and 86% of the combination group were significantly improved

38
Q

Drawbacks of cbt

A
  • May not work for severe cases
    • In some cases, depression may be so severe that patients cannot motivate themselves to engage with CBT
  • Success may be due to the therapist-patient relationship
    • Rosensweig (1936) suggested that the differences between different methods of psychotherapy, such as between CBT and systematic desensitisation, might actually be quite small
    • So talking to someone who will listen may be what matters most?
  • Ignores the past
    • The focus of CBT is on the present and the future, not the past
    • Some patients are aware that their childhood experiences may be linked to their current depression and want to talk about their experiences
  • Overemphasis on cognition
    • A patient living in poverty, or suffering abuse needs to change their circumstances, and any approach to therapy that emphasises what is happening in the patient’s mind rather than their environment can prevent this

Pyschopathology (4 decks)

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