the cognitive approach to explaining depression

Question 1

beck’s negative triad - basis

Answer 1

• Aaron Beck took a cognitive approach to explaining why some people are more vulnerable to depression
• suggested 3 parts to this cognitive vulnerability

Question 2

beck’s negative triad - faulty information processing

Answer 2

• when depressed people attend to the negative aspects of a situation and ignore positives
• also tend to blow small problems out of proportion and think in black and white terms

Question 3

beck’s negative triad - negative self-schema

Answer 3

• a self-schema is the package of information people have about themselves
• people use schema to interpret the world, so if someone has a negative self-schema then they interpret all information about themselves negatively

Question 4

beck’s negative triad - the negative triad

Answer 4

• suggested that a person develops a dysfunctional view of themselves because of 3 types of automatic negative thinking, regardless of the reality
• these elements are called the negative triad
• when a person is depressed, negative thoughts are uppermost

1. negative view of the world - ‘the world is a cold hard place’, creates impression that there is no hope anywhere
2. negative view of the future - ‘there isn’t much chance that the economy will really get better’, reduce any hopefulness and enhance depression
3. negative view of the self - ‘i am a failure’, enhance any existing depressive feelings because they confirm the emotions of low self-esteem

Question 5

ellis’s ABC model - basis

Answer 5

• proposed that good mental health is the result of rational thinking, thinking in ways that allow people to be happy and free from pain (rational thoughts)
• conditions like anxiety and depression result from irrational thoughts
• used the ABC model to explain how irrational thoughts affect our behaviour and emotional state

Question 6

ellis’s ABC model - A - activating event

Answer 6

• focused on situations in which irrational thoughts are triggered by external events
• ellis said we get depressed when we experience negative events, these trigger irrational beliefs

Question 7

ellis’s ABC model - B - beliefs

Answer 7

• identified a range of irrational beliefs
• called the belief that we must always succeed or achieve perfection ‘musturbation’
• ‘i-cant-stand-it-itis’ is the belief that it is a major disaster whenever something does not go smoothly
• ‘utopianisim’ is the belief that life is always meant to be fair

Question 8

ellis’s ABC model - C - consequences

Answer 8

• when an activating event triggers irrational beliefs, there are emotional and behavioural consequences

Question 9

beck’s negative triad evaluation - research support

Answer 9

• ‘cognitive vulnerability’ refers to ways of thinking that may predispose a person to becoming depressed
• Clark and Beck concluded that these vulnerabilities were more common in depressed people, and they also preceded the depression
• this was confirmed in a prospective study by Joseph Cohen, who tracked the development of 473 adolescents, regularly measuring cognitive vulnerability
• found that this predicted later depression
• shows association between cognitive vulnerability and depression

Question 10

beck’s negative triad evaluation - real-world application (support from Cohen)

Answer 10

• strength is applications in screening and treatment for depression
• Cohen concluded that assessing cognitive vulnerability allows psychologists to screen young people to identify those most at risk of developing depression
• this can also be applied in CBT by altering the kind of cognitions that make people vulnerable to depression, making them more resilient to negative events

Question 11

ellis’s ABC model evaluation - real-world application

Answer 11

• strength is application to psychological treatment of depression
• ellis’s approach is called rational emotive behaviour therapy (REBT), idea is that by arguing with the depressed person, the therapist can alter the irrational beliefs that are making them unhappy
• some evidence to support that REBT can change negative beliefs and relieve the symptoms of depression

Question 12

ellis’s ABC model evaluation - reactive and endogenous depression

Answer 12

• limitation is it only explains reactive depression and not endogenous depression
• reactive depression is triggered by life events (activating events)
• many cases of depression not traceable to life events, not obvious what leads the person to become depressed
• this is sometimes called endogenous depression, Ellis’s model is less useful for explaining this
• not a complete theory, more holistic to look at role of thinking or biological causes, lowers validity