Psychological Explanations Of Depression

Question 1

Two phsycological explanations for depression

Answer 1

Psychodynamic theory

Cognitive theory

Question 2

Psychodynamic approach to depression

Answer 2

Freud claims depression is caused by a real or imagined loss of affection in childhood.
The superego doesn’t allow you to hate the parents for the loss of affection, therefore feelings of anger are repressed
The anger is replaced by guilt for feeling angry and anger is turned inwards.
An adult loss then makes you regress to the state of childhood loss, therefore you hate yourself.
Depression is therefore anger turned inwards.

Question 3

Evidence of the psychodynamic approach of depression

Answer 3

• children often blame themselves after a divorce between parents or even the death of a parent
• Bowlbys work showed a negative consequence of early deprivation
• Bifulco

Question 4

Problems with psychodynamic approach to depression

Answer 4

• The loss of a parent could cause a shift in thinking style, rather than guilt from the superego
• Unfalsifiable as it deals with the subconscious
• Anger and hostility at childhood loss is directed at others, rather than themselves
• Psychoanalysis isn’t effective (poor predictive validity)

Question 5

Bifulco

Answer 5

Studied 250 women who had lost their mother as a child (under 17 yrs), these women were twice as likely to suffer depression or anxiety than women in general.

Question 6

Beck’s cognitive theory of depression

Answer 6

Beck maintained that depressed people behaved the way they do because their thinking is biased towards negative interpretations of the world.
Negative schemas, Cognitive Triad

Question 7

Negative Schemas

Answer 7

Beck believed that the person suffering had developed negative schemas through childhood. These lead to cognitive distortions when the person with negative self schemas become prone to making logical errors in their thinking.
Ineptness Schema makes people with depression expect to fail
Self blame Schema make people with depression feel responsible for all misfortunes
Negative self evaluation schemas constantly remind people with depression of their worthlessness

Question 8

Cognitive triad

Answer 8

Interaction of self, the world, the future, led to the interference with normal cognitive processing, affecting perception, memory and problem solving abilities. These impairments will lead to the person becoming completely obsessed with negative thoughts and would results in symptoms of depression.

Question 9

Boury

Answer 9

Collected BDI scores of students to measure how severely they had depression and then gave them a series of tests about their views of failure and whether failure is inevitable or not.
He found a positive correlation between having a high BDI score and misinterpreting failure and feelings of hopelessness in the future.

Question 10

Butler and Beck

Answer 10

Looked at 14 meta-analysis of the cognitive therapy of depression and found that therapy worked significantly better than a control group who received no treatment. 80% of adults benefitted from the treatment suggesting the explanation has high predictive validity.

Question 11

Strengths of the cognitive approach to depression

Answer 11

• Led to effective therapy with no side effects and low relapse rate
• Butler and Beck
• Boury

Question 12

Weaknesses of cognitive approach to depression

Answer 12

• Difficult to test empirically

- Difficult to entangle cause and effect

Question 13

Becks bidirectional theory

Answer 13

Beck acknowledged the problems with cause and effect and says that the theory and depression may be bidirectional, in that faulty thinking sometimes leads to depression, but sometimes depression leads to faulty thinking