psychopathology: the cognitive approach to explaining depression

Question 1

What are two ways of explaining depression?

Answer 1

• Aaron Beck’s Cognitive theory of Depression
• Albert Ellis’ ABC Model

Question 2

What is Beck’s cognitive theory of depression?

Answer 2

• Describes a pattern of negative thinking that contributes to the development and maintenance of depression
• The triad consists of three main components

Question 3

What is the first component of Beck’s cognitive theory of depression?

Answer 3

Cognitive Bias

Question 4

What is cognitive bias?

Answer 4

• Depressed people are more likely to focus on the negative aspects of a situation while ignoring the positives (cognitive primacy)
• prone to distorting and misinterpreting information

Question 5

What are some examples of cognitive biases?

Answer 5

• Overgeneralisations: sweeping conclusion based on one incident
• Arbitrary inference: drawing conclusions when there is little or no evidence
• Catastrophising: exaggerate a minor setback and believe that it’s a complete disaster
• Personalisation: “this is all my fault”

Question 6

What is the second component of Beck’s cognitive theory of depression?

Answer 6

Negative self-schemas

Question 7

What are negative self-schemas?

Answer 7

• a ‘schema’ is a package of ideas and information developed through experience
• a self-schema is a package of knowledge we have about ourselves
• a negative self-schema may come from negative experiences e.g. criticism
• likely to interpret information about themselves in a negative way, leading to cognitive biases

Question 8

When are negative self-schemas developed?

Answer 8

During childhood, especially in parent-child experiences

Question 9

What is the third component of Beck’s cognitive theory of depression?

Answer 9

The negative triad

Question 10

What is the negative triad?

Answer 10

• A person develops a dysfunctional view of themselves because of three types of negative thinking that occur automatically.
• Cognitive biases and negative self-schemas maintain the negative triad, a negative and irrational view
• These thoughts are symptomatic of depressed people

Question 11

What is the negative triad made up of?

Answer 11

Negative views of:
- The self e.g. “nobody loves me”
- The world e.g. “the world is an unfair place”
- The future e.g. “I will always be a failure”

Question 12

What is Ellis’ ABC model?

Answer 12

• Albert Ellis proposed that good mental health is the result of rational thinking
• Irrational thinking are thoughts that interfere with us being happy and pain free
• He proposed the ABC model to explain how irrational thoughts could lead to depression

Question 13

What does the ‘A’ in the ABC model stand for?

Answer 13

Activating event
- an event or situation that triggers emotional responses.
- it could be something external or internal

Question 14

What does the ‘B’ in the ABC model stand for?

Answer 14

Beliefs
- thoughts, interpretations or beliefs and individual holds about the activating event
- Ellis emphasised that it’s not the event itself that causes emotional distress, but the beliefs about the event
- can be either rational or irrational beliefs

Question 15

What does the ‘C’ in the ABC model stand for?

Answer 15

Consequences
- The emotional and behavioural outcomes that result from the beliefs
- rational beliefs lead to healthy emotional outcomes
- irrational beliefs lead to unhealthy emotional outcomes, including depression

Question 16

Evaluation: Application to therapy -> strength

Answer 16

• Cognitive explanations have been used to develop effective treatments for depression including Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and Rational Emotive Behavioural Therapy (developed from Ellis’ ABC model)
• These therapies attempt to identify and challenge negative, irrational thoughts and have been successfully used to treat people with depression
• provides further support to the cognitive explanation for depression

Question 17

Evaluation: Doesnt explain all aspects of depression -> limitation

Answer 17

• Beck’s theory explains the basic symptoms of depression, however it is complex
• Some depressed patients are deeply angry and Beck cannot easily explain this extreme emotion
• Beck’s theory cannot explain unique, abnormal cases
• does not explain the origin of irrational thoughts
• since most research in this area is correlational, psychologists are unable to determine if negative, irrational thoughts cause depression, or whether a person’s depression leads to a negative mindset
• it is possible that other factors e.g. genes and neurotransmitters, are the cause of depression and the negative, irrational thoughts are the symptom of depression

Question 18

Evaluation: Research evidence which supports it -> strength

Answer 18

• A range of evidence supports the idea that depression is associated with faulty information processing, negative self-schemas and the cognitive triad of negative thinking
• Boury et.al (2001) found that patients with depression were more likely to interpret information negatively (cognitive bias) and feel hopeless about their future (cognitive triad)
• Bates et. al (1999) gave depressed patents negative automatic thought statements to read and found that their symptoms became worse
• these findings support different components of Beck’s theory and the idea that negative thinking is involved with depression