Cognitive Explanation of Mental Illness

What does the cognitive explanation for mental illness suggest?

• This approach is concerned with the processes of thinking, attention and perception that underlie normal behaviour

• Cognitive psychologists found that the behaviourist approached ignored the ability of people to reflect on and consciously control their own behaviour

• Addresses symptoms and causes of mental disorders by examining irrational or maladaptive beliefs

• The cognitions of a person with mental illness are somehow faulty- the way they perceive and think about situations causes the difficulty

Summary of the cognitive explanation for mental illness?

People with mental illness have faulty or distorted thinking patterns and perceptions

What are three types of cognitive distortion that Burns suggested?

• Over generalisation

  • Viewing one unfortunate event as part of a never ending defeat or struggle

• Filtering

  • Giving greater consideration and focus to negative aspects while ignoring or downplaying positive ones

• Catastrophisation

  • Feeling that a situation will be far worse than it actually is or turns out to be

What does Aaron Beck suggest about how negative schemas can cause depression?

• Depressed individuals feel as they do because their thinking is biased towards negative interpretations of the world and they lack a perceived sense of control

• Negative schema

  • Depressed people have gained a negative schema during childhood and they adopt a negative view of the world

  • This can be caused by factors such as parent/peer rejection, criticism by others, physical and emotional abuse

  • When a person encounters new situations which resemble the original conditions in which these schemas were learnt, it leads to negative, systematic cognitive biases in adulthood causing one to over-generalise and make sweeping conclusions about their own self worth

What does Aaron Beck suggests about how the negative triad can cause depression?

• Beck believes there are three forms of negative thinking and people who are depressed usually show all three:

  • Negative views about the self

  • Negative views about the world

  • Negative views about the future

• These maladaptive thinking patterns originate from childhood as we acquire information about particular aspects about the world and people will select information from their environment to confirm their negative thoughts even in the face of a majority of positive evidence

Nature vs Nurture

• Interactionist perspective

  • Cognitive psychologists believe behaviour is influenced by learning and experience such as through negative schemas but is also our brain’s capacity as information processors

• The cognitive explanation learns more towards the nurture side of the debate

Reductionism

• Focuses only on how cognitive processes can lead to depression, ignores factors such as brain abnormality, genes, neurotransmitters, etc.

• Strength- Only focuses on one factor so we are able to establish cause and effect

• Weakness- Reduced validity as we are not getting a whole picture of human behaviour

Scientific

• Falsifiability- Depressed people are found to have more faulty thinking by Beck than people without depression

• Subjective- Psychiatrist interpretation of faulty thinking is up to their interpretation and cannot be objective

  • The faulty thoughts may not necessarily be the cause of their behaviour