Psychopathology Flashcards
Definition of depression
A mood effective disorder.
MDD symptoms of depression
- Depressed mood or irritable most of the day, nearly everyday
- Decreased interest or pleasure in most activity’s, most of each day
- Significant weight change (5%) or change in appetite
- Change in sleep: insomnia/hypersomnia
- Change in activity
- Fatigue/loss of energy
- Guilt/worthlessness
- Concentration: unable to think, concentrate or more indecisive
- Thoughts of death or suicide
Emotional characteristics of depression:
- Lowered mood (worthless, empty)
- Anger (at self or others)
- Feelings of despair
- Self esteem is low
Behavioural characteristics of depression:
- Low levels of energy
- Withdrawn from work/social
- Psychomotor agitation (struggle to relax)
- Disruption to sleep
- Appetite increase/decrease
Cognitive characteristics of depression:
- Irrational thoughts
- Absolutist thinking/ suicidal thoughts
- Poor levels of concentration
- Pay more attention to negative aspects of a situation
- Tend to recall unhappy events
Beck’s negative triad
- The self
- The future
- The world
Definition of OCD:
- An anxiety disorder
- Sufferers expérience persistant and intrusive thoughts occurring as obsession, compulsions or a combination of two.
Negative schema
- Developed throughout childhood and adolescence, when authority figures place unrealistic demands on them and are highly critical.
- These negative schémas develop providing a negative framework for viewing events pessimistically.
Evaluation of Beck’s negative triad explaining depression
- Socially desirable - do people normally report what they are thinking?
- Support the cognitive explanation of depression as findings shows the depressed people did have different patterns of thinking, compared to the non depressed patient.
Ellis’ ABC Model overview:
- Depressed people blamed external events for their unhappiness and that their interpretation of events was to blame for their distress.
- It was developed to explain the response to negative events; how people react differently to stress and adversity.
Cognitive bias of depressed people
Beck found that depressed people are more likely to focus on the negative aspects of a situation, while ignoring the positives. They are prone to distorting and misinterpreting information, a process known as cognitive bias.
• The negative bias’ include: over-generalisations and catastrophising.
Ellis’ ABC model
A - Activating event: something that happens in the environment around you to which there is a reaction.
B - Beliefs: you hold a belief about the event of situation, about why it occurred; could be rational or irrational.
C - Consequences: you have an emotional response to your belief - the feelings and behaviour the belief now causes. In essence the external event is blamed for the unhappiness being experienced.
Evaluation of Ellis’ ABC model in explaining depression:
• Blames the patient rather than situational factors- i.e not considering how life events or family problems may contribute towards disorder.
• Consequence rather than cause - It may be that some disorders lead to dysfunctional thinking rather than the other way h
•The idea of schemata is rather vague and it is not clear about how irrational thoughts should be defined and measured.
•Comparison with alternative explanations e.g. biological evidence suggests genetic, neurochemical and neuroanatomical influences a biological predisposition
•It could be that irrational thoughts are entirely rational and life circumstances need to be targeted. e.g sometimes a person’s thinking may be justified
Overview of
Ellis’ ABC model overview:
- Depressed people blamed external events for the unhappiness, and that their interpretation of events was to blame for the distress.
- It was developed to explain response to negative events, how people react differently to stress and adversity.
