Cognitive approach to explaining depression

Cognitive approach

Focused on how our mental processes affect behaviour

Beck’s negative triad

Took out a cognitive apporach to explaining why people are more vulnerable to depression than others. This approach suggests that a person’s cognitions create this vulnerability

He suggested 3 main parts:

• Faulty information processing

• Negative schema

• Negative triad

Faulty information processing

Negative self-critical thoughts lead to faulty interpretation of events.

People may show:

• Overgeneralisation

• Selective perception

• Magnification

• Personalisation

Overgeneralisation

Making sweeping conclusions based on 1 event

Selective perception

Focusing on the negatives and ignoring the positives

Magnification

Exaggerating or catastrophising the significance of a situation

Personalisation

Attributing negative events to yourself

Negative schema

Schema are cognitive frameworks that help someone to organise information in their mind and help them to understand new situations. Negative schema may be learn as a consequence of criticisms by others.

Beck proposed that these negative schemas are then triggered when a new situation is similar to when the schemas are learned.

These schemas lead to pessimistic views of the world in adulthood and fuel cognitive biases.

Negative triad

3 key elements to a person’s negative belief system

• Negative views about the self

• Negative views about the future

• Negative views about the world

Ellis’ ABC model

Saw the causes of depression to be irrational thinking. His theory was developed to explain how people respond to negative events and how they react differently to stress and adversity

ABC Model:

A - Activating event

B - Beliefs - May be rational or irrational

C - Consequences - Rational beliefs lead to healthy emotional responses. Irrational beliefs lead to unhealthy emotional and behavioural responses.

Mustabatory thinking

The belief that we must always succeed and achieve perfection

I-can’t-stand-it-itis

The belief that it is a major disaster whenever something does not go smoothly

Utopianism

The belief that life is always meant to be fair

S Useful for treating depression

CBT developed from the cognitive approach and was found to be an effective treatment for depression, combined with drug treatments

CBT works by challenging irrational thoughts and supports the concept that depression is the consequence of negative thinking

W Alternate explanations

Zhang

The biological approach suggests that low serotonin levels may cause depression.

Drug treatments that are successful in reducing symptoms affect the levels of serotonin in the brain. This suggests that it plays a role in depression

Zhang found a gene related to low levels of serotonin. 10x more common in those with depression. Explained through diathesis-stress model where there is genetic vulnerability

Only considering the cognitive explanation is limited and incomplete.

Triad S Research support

Clark and Beck

Cohen

Cognitive vulnerability is the ways of thinking that predispose a person to becoming depressed.

Clark and Beck concluded that cognitive vulnerabilities were more common in people with depression but they preceded depression.

Cohen tracked the development of 473 adolescents and measured their CV. He found that showing CV predicted depression.

Suggests that there is an association between CV and depression

Triad W Inconsistent findings

Gittins and Hunt

Some research doesn’t support Beck’s findings.

His theory would predict that high self-criticism and low self-esteem in early adolescence should predict depression in later adolescence.

Gittins and Hunt found that self-criticism and depression were unrelated. Depression and self-esteem were related but depression came first.

Suggests that CV may not lead to depression like Beck believed

ABC S Application

Led to REBT (Rational Emotive Behavioural Therapy).

The idea is by arguing with the depressed person the therapist can alter the irrational beliefs.

David 2018 found evidence to support the idea that REBT can change negative beliefs and relieve depression symptoms.

ABC W Reactive and Endogenous depression

ABC model only explains reactive and endogenous depression.

Reactive depression - How we respond to negative life events also seems to be part of the result to our beliefs

Endogenous depression - Depression caused by internal factors like genetics

Suggests that Ellis’s model only explains some cases of depression so it is partial