Treating Depression Flashcards
What is the aim of cognitive therapy?
Identifies and challenges irrational thinking
Who developed the first form of cognitive therapy? What was it?
Albert Ellis developed REBT (rational emotive behavioural therapy) which resolves behavioural problems
What was Ellis’ ABCDEF model?
A) Activating event
B) Belief about event
D) Disputes changes
E) Effective new rational beliefs
F) New feelings
This stops…
C) Emotional consequences
What are the three ways of disputing irrational beliefs in cognitive therapy?
- Logical disputing (beliefs do not follow information logically)
- Empirical disputing (beliefs are not consistent with reality)
- Pragmatic disputing (beliefs lack usefulness in everyday life)
What are 3 components of how CBT functions?
- Homework is completed between sessions, which is vital in testing irrational beliefs againt reality. This puts new rational beliefs into practice to produce evidence for rational beliefs
- Behavioural activation encourages depressed clients to engage in activites they used to enjoy again, dealing with cognitive obstacles and providing more evience for irrationality of beliefs
- Unconditional positive regard is core as Ellis realised that you must convince the client of their value as a human being
What are the evaluations for the strengths of CBT?
Research support
* There is strong evidence that supports the idea that CBT is an effective therapy
* Ellis claimed a 90% success rate for CBT with it taking an average of 27 sessions, and Cujipers et al reviews 75 studies and found that CBT was superior to not having treatment
* March et al compared the effects of CBT with antidepressants and, after 36 weeks, 86% of combined group had significant improvements
* This shows that CBT emerged as just as effective as medication and helpful alongside medication, and gives support foe CBT being the first choice for treating depression
Long lasting effects for life
* The outcome can last for a person’s whole lifetime
* The long term strengths include providing individuals withlasting cognitive tools to manage their mental health, enabling them to proactively handle new stressors and challenges by disputing irrational beliefs. Self acceptance is also promoted and individuals are empowered to deal with problems better.
* Therefore, when therapy is finished, symptoms are unlikely to re emerge as thinking patterns have changed
Support for behavioural activation
* There has been research support for behavioural activation, showing that changing behaviour can alleviate depression
* Babyak et al (2000) conducted a study with 156 adult volunteers who had all been diagnosed with major depressive disorder and were all allocated to one of 3 conditions: 4 month course of aerobic excercise, drug treatment or a combination of both
* All clients showed significant improvement at the end of the 4 months, but the excercise group showed a significantly lower relapse rate than the medication groups
* This shows a change in physical activity can be beneficial in treating depression
What are the evaluations for the weaknesses of CBT?
Individual differences
* There are individual difference in how well people with depression will respond to CBT
* Elkin et al (1985) suggested that it is less suitable for those who have high levels of irrational beliefs that are rigid and resistant to change
* Simons et al (1995) found it less suitable for those who have high levels of stress due to stressors that therapy cannot resolve
* This suggests a weakness to CBT and that it is not a therapy for everyone, and may be more suits to certain types of individuals than others
Alternative treatments
* THere are alternative treatments to CBT that may be preferable, among the most popular being antidepressants such as SSRIs
* Drug therapies have the advantage over CBT as they require less effort on the part of the client and work faster
* Drug therapy can be used alongside CBT to help the individual cope better with the stress of CBT
* This suggests that using CBT and drugs might be the best option when treating depression
The Dodo Bird effect
* A further issue is that CBT may not be superior to other methods of treatment, and that all methods may be equally as effective
* Rosenzweig (1936) named this after the dodo bird in Alice in Wonderland who decided that everyone should win. This same concept applies to treatments for mental illness
* Research tends to find smaller differences in success rates of different therapies. Luborsky reviewed over 100 studies that compared different therapies and only found small differences, arguing that this lack of difference is due to therapies having many common factors
* Therefore, this matters as it shows that commonalities, such as having the opportunity to simply talk to someone, is the reason why all therapies are equally as effective
