the cognitive approach - explaining and treating depression Flashcards
what does this model believe behaviours are the result of?
Irrational thoughts or beliefs about aspects of the situation of concepts, which cause maladaptive behaviour
What are the key ideas for explaining the causes of depression?
Mustabatory thinking
Ellis’ ABC model
Negative Schemas
Beck’s negative triad
what is meant by mustabatory thinking?
Mustabatory thinking is the source of irrational thinking. This is the belief that certain assumptions have to be true for an individual to be happy.
1.I must be accepted by other people I find important
2.I must do well or I am worthless.
3.The world must give me happiness or I will die.
Outline Ellis’ ABC Model
Ellis (1962) came up with the ABC model and stated that faulty and irrational thinking prevents the individual from behaving in an adaptive manner. Ellis puts the key idea down to mustabatory
thinking however, says that depression is attained through the process of ABC:
*A: Activating agent - seeing something that acts as a stimuli or trigger.
*B: Belief – the way in which you think about the behaviour be it irrational or rational.
*C: Consequence – the way you respond be it with healthy or unhealthy emotions.
What is meant by negative schema?
A schema is similar to a script. Depressed people have a negative schema. This schema is formed through experience with the environment and they develop negative views on life through interaction with peers, family, teachers etc. Their negative schema of expecting to fail occurs whenever they encounter a new situation similar to previous ones with negative outcomes. In these
situations they over-generalize which then means they will lower their self-worth as a result of these negative biases.
What is meant by Beck’s negative triad?
Beck calls this ‘The Negative Triad’ believing that depressed individuals feel that way because their
thinking is biased towards negative interpretations of the world related to their perceived lack of control. They think negative about three things which causes their depression:
*Negative view of the self - ‘I am undesirable’.
*Negative view of the world - ‘Everyone prefers other people’s company’.
*Negative view of the future - ‘I will always be alone’.
strengths of cognitive causes for depression
*Irrational beliefs are sometimes more realistic in their perception of reality compared to a distorted view of reality which some of us have. This realism allows individual to make accurate and appropriate decisions in life rather than irrational decisions based on unfounded optimism.
*CBT is used effectively to treat depression which means that if the therapy is effective in treating depression, the cause must be down to irrational thinking.
limitations of cognitive causes of depression
*This approach blames the person for the illness rather than situational factors which may in turn further induce their depression.
*The biological approach disagrees and suggests that mental illnesses are the result of low serotonin levels meaning that something else may be causing the thoughts.
*An issue is that we cannot establish whether irrational thoughts cause depression of whether they are the result of depression.
what is meant by cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT)
The idea of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is to adjust patients thinking focusing on the impact of thoughts on behaviour. Using a given situation, they change the way in which they perceive it. They use the following process as part of therapy to treat the patient.
outline the procedure of CBT
- Develop trusting relationship so that the patient can disclose information comfortably.
- Let patient explain problems freely to the therapist.
- Identify common problems using thought catching (selected the thoughts that match).
- Challenge ideas and beliefs using the following techniques:
*Logical disputing - Challenging whether this idea actually makes sense in its application.
*Empirical disputing - Questioning whether there is any evidence that this belief is accurate.
*Pragmatic disputing - Enquiring whether this belief will actually help them.
5.Develop strategies to cope with their issue including the following techniques:
*Homework- Participants have to do things in between sessions to push their irrational thoughts out and practise replacing them with rational ones.
*Behavioural activation - Patients are expected to engage in more pleasurable and active activities that they used to enjoy.
*Keeping a diary - Patients note times whether their thoughts have occurred so that the clinician and identify commonalities and these situations can be targeted.
Who proposed the idea of Rational Emotive Behavioural Therapy (REBT)
Ellis (1991)
Outline what is meant by REBT
This therapy is an example of a type of CBT that is used to treat depression. We know that the cause of depression is:
A: Activating agent - seeing something
B: Belief - irrational or rational
C: Consequence - healthy or unhealthy emotions
Ellis states that we treat depression using the process of CBT which completes the following steps:
D: Disrupting - teach the client to challenge the irrational beliefs
E: Effective - replacing the irrational with a rational effectively
F: Feelings - this produces nice feelings and positive emotions
Outline Thase et al (2007)’s research
Aim: To investigate whether there is a difference in effectiveness for treating depression between cognitive therapy (CT) and anti-depressive medication
Procedure: Participants diagnosed with depression were either given CT or anti-depressive drugs to treat their symptoms.
Findings: Both CT and anti-depressive drugs were effective at treating depression and there was no difference between their effectiveness. Participants reported greater tolerance for CT compared to drugs.
Conclusions: CT is just as effective as drugs at treating depression which suggests that depression is, in part, down to faulty thinking.
Strengths of cognitive therapies for depression
*Supported by Thase et al (2007) as it shows that CBT is equally as effective as all other treatments suggesting that the therapy must be effective in treating aspects of the disorder.
*CBT is a causative treatment as it treats the root cause of the depression and what caused the depression rather than drugs which may only treat the symptoms such as anxiety.
*Can be tailored to patient’s needs as each patient is different with different triggers and causes of depression unlike drug therapy which only offers the same treatment for all patients.
*This is an ideographic treatment as it works on the individual patients needs unlike nomothetic treatments such as drugs that are not specific to them
Limitations of cognitive therapies for treating depression
*This is a time-consuming therapy as the patients have to commit a lot of time to partake in the therapy unlike drug treatment which involves little time from the patient.
*One issue is that this doesn’t work for everyone as sometimes the cause is not a cognitive cause and it may be of a biological basis. .
*The patient has to want the therapy to work for it to work meaning that if they do not engage in trying to cure themselves, they will not be cured unlike drug treatment which will impact the patient with little effort on their part.
*Individual differences make this inaccessible to certain people as this is an expensive therapy. Therefore, not everyone can afford it as the NHS will only play for a limited amount of sessions
