Depression - cognitive explanation

Question 1

Beck’s negative triad

Answer 1

• 3 kinds of negative thinking that contribute to becoming depressed = negative views of the world, future and self
• Faulty information processing:
• When depressed people attend to the negative aspects of a situation and ignore the positives
• Also tend to blow small problems out of proportion and tend to think in ‘black and white’ terms
• Negative self-schema:
• Schema = package of ideas and info developed through experiences
• Self-schema = package of info about yourself
• People with negative self-schema interpret info about themselves as negative

Question 2

Ellis’s ABC model

Answer 2

• Proposed good mental health is the result of rational thinking
• To Ellis, conditions like anxiety and depression can result from irrational thoughts
• Irrational thoughts = thoughts that interfere with us being happy and free from pain
• Used the ABC model to explain how irrational beliefs affect our behaviour and emotional state
• A = Activating events - negative events trigger irrational beliefs
• B = Beliefs - Ellis identified a range of beliefs…
  1) Musterbation = we must always succeed
  2) I-can’t-stand-it-itis = major disaster when something doesn’t go smoothly
  3) Utopianism = life is always meant to be fair
• C = Consequences - when an event triggers irrational beliefs, there’s emotional and behavioural consequences

Question 3

Beck’s negative triad - Strength

Answer 3

• Supporting research
• Study conducted = tracked 473 adolescents, ensuring they measured their cognitive vulnerability regularly and found that those who had shown cognitive vulnerability predicted depression later on
• Shows there’s an association between cognitive vulnerability and depression

Question 4

Beck’s negative triad - Limitation

Answer 4

• Not all irrational thoughts are irrational
• Research has shown that depressed people had the ‘sadder but wiser effect’ where they gave more accurate estimates of the likelihood of disaster than those not depressed

Question 5

Ellis’s ABC model - Strength

Answer 5

• Real world application
• Ellis’s REBT suggests that by vigorously arguing with a depressed person the therapist can alter the irrational thoughts that are making them unhappy
• Means that REBT has real world value

Question 6

Ellis’s ABC model - Limitation

Answer 6

• Only explains reactive depression and not endogenous depression
• Reactive depression - individual has had an activating event
• Endogenous depression - the cause of the depression is not traceable to life events
• Means that Ellis’s model can only explain some cases of depression - therefore it is a partial explanation