Psychopathology: Depression Flashcards
Define Depression.
- A mental disorder characterised by low mood and energy levels.
Behavioural Characteristics Of Depression.
Ways In Which People Act:
- Aggression And Self-harm: Sufferers are often irritable which can lead to aggression. It can also lead to physical aggression towards themselves.
- Disruption To Sleep And Eating Behaviour: May experience insomnia or hyper insomnia. May increase or decrease.
- Activity Levels: Typically sufferers have reduced energy levels. It can also have the opposite effect - psychomotor agitation (struggle to relax).
Emotional Characteristics Of Depression.
Ways in which people feel:
- Anger
- Lowered Self-Esteem: Emotional experience of how we like ourselves.
- Lowered Mood: Patients often describe themselves as worthless and empty.
Cognitive Characteristics Of Depression.
- Poor levels of concentration: Unable to stick to a task.
- Adding to and dwelling on the negative: Tend to focus on negative aspects of a situation.
- Absolute thinking: Black and white thinking, it is either good or bad.
Cognitive Approach Explanation Of Depression: Beck’s Cognitive Theory Of Depression Overview.
- Suggests the way people think creates a vulnerability for depression, and suggested there are three parts to cognitive vulnerability.
- Includes faulty informative processing, negative schema and the negative triad.
Cognitive Approach Explanation Of Depression: Beck’s Cognitive Theory Of Depression - Faulty Informative Processing.
- Depressed people focus on the negative aspects of a situation and ignore the positive.
- Tend to blow small problems out of proportion and think in ‘black and white.’
Cognitive Approach Explanation Of Depression: Beck’s Cognitive Theory Of Depression - Negative Schema.
- A schema is a package of ideas and information developed through experience, which act as a mental framework for the interpretation of information.
- A self-schema is a package of information that we have about ourselves.
- Use it to interpret the world, so if someone has a negative schema they interpret all information negatively.
- Helps maintain the negative triad.
Cognitive Approach Explanation Of Depression: Beck’s Cognitive Theory Of Depression - The Negative Triad.
- Three kinds of automatic negative thinking that contribute to becoming depressed which are negative views of the world, the future and the self.
- Leads to interpret their experiences in a negative way and so make them more vulnerable to depression.
- Negative view about world makes them believe that there is no hope anywhere -> Negative views of future reduce hopefulness and enhance depression -> negative views of the self enhance existing depressive feelings.
Cognitive Approach Explanation Of Depression: Ellis’ ABC Model.
- Based on the argument that good mental is due to rational thinking.
- Conditions such as anxiety and depression are thought to be due to negative thoughts which interfere with us being happy and pain free.
- A = Activating event leads to an irrational belief = B, the consequences = C may be depression.
Beck’s Cognitive Theory Of Depression Evaluation: Strength - Supporting Evidence.
- Cognitive explanation for depression has supporting evidence for the ideas that depression is associated with faulty information processing, negative schema and the negative triad.
- Grazioli and Terry 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.
- This supports the cognitive explanation that depression is due to mental processes.
Beck’s Cognitive Theory Of Depression Evaluation: Strength - High Application.
- Useful applications to treating depression.
- For example, Beck’s explanation has been applied to therapy in the form of CBT.
- All cognitive aspects of depression can be identified and challenged in CBT.
- Include components of the negative triad that are easily identified.
- The therapy has consistently been found to be the best treatment for depression.
- This means that if depression is treated by challenging thoughts that have a role in causing depression.
Ellis’ ABC Model Evaluation: Weakness - Not All Irrational Beliefs Are Irrational.
- Not all irrational beliefs are irrational.
- For example, Alloy and Abrahamson found that depressed people gave more accurate estimates of the likelihood of disaster than non-depressed people (the sadder but wiser effect).
- This suggests that depressive realists tend to see things for what they are rather than seeing things through rose coloured glasses.
- This meant that some ‘irrational’ beliefs may simply seem irrational rather than be irrational.
Ellis’ ABC Model Evaluation: Weakness - Not Always A Cause.
- There is no doubt that some cases of depression follow an activating event.
- Psychologists call this reactive depression and see it as a different from the kind of depression that arises without any obvious cause.
- This means Ellis’ explanation only applies to some kinds of depression and therefore only a partial explanation for depression.
Ellis’ ABC Model Evaluation: Strength - Successful Therapy.
- A strength of this explanation is that it has lead to successful therapy.
- The idea that by challenging irrational beliefs a person can reduce their depression is supported by evidence such as Lipsky et al.
- This in turn supports the basic theory because it suggests that the irrational beliefs had some role in depression.
The Cognitive Approach Evaluation: Weakness - Biological Explanation.
- Depression can also be explained in terms of genetic factors and neurotransmitters.
- For example, studies have found low levels of the neurotransmitters serotonin in depressed people, and a gene related to this is 10x more common in depressed people.
- It may be better to take a diatheses-stress model approach where the development of depression looks at biological and cognitive explanations together.
