Psychopathology: Depression

Question 1

What is depression?

Answer 1

A mood disorder characterised by feeling in of despondency and hopelessness.

Question 2

what’s unipolar depression?

Answer 2

Depression occurring without mania
—> e.g. someone constantly in a sad mood, having delusions and social impairments - reduced quality of life, made worse by their lack of energy and motivation

Question 3

What is bipolar depression?

Answer 3

depression characterised by periods of heightened moods and periods of despondency and hopelessness.
—> e.g. someone who swings between periods of depression and mania

Question 4

What are the behavioural characteristics for both unipolar and bipolar?

Answer 4

1) Unipolar - loss of energy, social impairment, weight change, poor hygiene and sleep pattern disturbance, etc.
2) Bipolar - high energy levels, reckless behaviour, talkative, etc.

Question 5

What are some emotional characteristics of unipolar and bipolar depression?

Answer 5

1) Unipolar - loss of enthusiasm, constant sad mood, feeling of worthlessness.
2) Bipolar - elevated mood states, irritability, lack of guilt, etc.

Question 6

What are some cognitive characteristics of unipolar and bipolar depression?

Answer 6

1) Unipolar - delusions, reduced concentration, thoughts of death, poor memory, etc.
2) Bipolar - delusions, irrational thought processes, etc.

Question 7

What does the incidence of depression suggest?

Answer 7

Abut 20% of people suffer depression at some point and it is twice as common in women as in men.
- can be broken down into endogenous depression (related to internal biochemical and hormonal factors) and exogenous depression (related to stressful experiences)

Question 8

What is Becks Negative Cognitive Triad?

Answer 8

Negative views about the world (‘everyone hates me’) —> Negative views about the future (‘I’ll never be good at anything’) —> Negative views about oneself (‘I am worthless’)

Question 9

What are negative schemas?

Answer 9

• Ineptness schemas — e.g. i can’t do anything
• Self blame schemas
• Negative self evaluation schemas

Question 10

What are cognitive biases?

Answer 10

• Arbitrary inference — e.g. everything wrong is because of me
• Selective abstraction — e.g. remembering only bad things
• Overgeneralisation — e.g. making a big deal
• Magnification and minimisation

Question 11

What did Beck believe about Negative Schemas?

Answer 11

believes people become depressed because they see the world through negative schemas. These dominate thinking and are triggered whenever individuals are in situations similar to those in which the schemas were learned.
• Negative schemas continue into adulthood, providing a framework to view life in a pessimistic fashion

Question 12

How are negative schemas and cognitive biases linked?

Answer 12

• Negative schemas fuel and are fuelled by cognitive biases (the tendency to think in certain ways), causing individuals to misperceive reality in a negative ways.
• Negative schemas, together with cognitive biases, maintain the negative triad.

Question 13

What’s Ellis’ ABC model?

Answer 13

depressives mistakenly blame external events for their unhappiness. However it is their interpretation of these events that is to blame for their success.
The ABC model -
A = Activating events
B = Beliefs
C = Consequence

Question 14

What did Saisto et al find that supports the idea of negative thoughts leading to depression?

Answer 14

studied expectant mothers and found those that not adjust personal goals to match specific demands to the transition to motherhood, and indulged in negative thinking had increased depression. The supports the idea of negative thoughts lead to depression.

Question 15

What did Tony and Glazioli find to support the negative triad?

Answer 15

assessed 65 pregnant women for vulnerability before and after birth. Women with high vulnerability had post-natal depression cognitions that developed before pregnancy. shows how the negative triad increases likelihood of depression.

Question 16

What’s some general strengths of cognitive explanation?

Answer 16

+ There is a lots of research evidence to support cognitive vulnerability to depression
+ Based on scientific principles allowing objective testing
+ a high degree of success has been shown in the development of treatments
+ Acknowledges other aspects of depression including genetics

Question 17

What are some of the general weaknesses of the cognitive explanation of depression?

Answer 17

• one limitation of Ellis’ ABC model is that it only explains reactive depression
• this approach has less success in treating bi-polar depression
• Not all depressives have a distorted view of their own abilities

Question 18

What’s some general weaknesses of cognitive explanations into depression?

Answer 18

• one limitation of Ellis’ ABC model is that it only explains reactive depression
• this approach has less success in treating bi-polar depression
• Not all depressives have a distorted view of their own abilities

Question 19

What is Becks way of treating Depression?

Answer 19

Becks CBT:
- patient and therapist work together to clarify the patients problems. They identify where there might be negative or irrational thoughts that will benefit from challenge.
- must challenge the negative triad - identify negative thoughts about the self, the world and the future and challenge them to see past it and find a positive aspect on life. Patients must take an active role in their treatment
- ‘patient as a scientist’ - patients are encouraged to test the reality of their irrational beliefs - looking for evidence to disprove them in the way a scientist would.

Question 20

What’s Ellis’ way of treating depression?

Answer 20

Rational Emotive Behaviour therapy (REBT - a form of CBT)
- challenging irrational beliefs - therapist identifies the irrational belief and challenges it using empirical arguments and logic arguments.
- Behavioural Activation - to work with the depressed patient to gradually decrease their avoidance and isolation, and increase their engagement and activities that have been shown to improve mood.

Question 21

What’s some of the strengths to treating depression?

Answer 21

• Effective - large body to support - March compared effects of CBT with antidepressant drugs and 81% of people with CBT were cured, 81% of people with drugs cured and 86% of people with both were cured - shows CBT just as effective as drug therapy
• success due to patient-therapist relationship, the quality of this relationship between the therapist and patient determines if their treatment is successful or not. If a patient trusts their therapists, they are more likely to open up and reveal more - so success is more likely.

Question 22

What are some of the weaknesses to treating depression?

Answer 22

• may not work for severe cases - some cases are so severe that the patient can’t motivate themselves to want to get better - only works if the patient puts in the effort
• overemphasises cognition