| What are the assumptions of the cognitive explanations? | They believe that the disorder is the result of disturbance in 'thinking'
Focuses on the individuals negative thoughts, irrational beliefs and misinterpreation of events as being the cause of depression |
| What is Beck's negative triad? | Depression caused by negative self-schemas to maintian the cogntitive triad:
Negative view of ourselves, our future and the world around us
They occur automatically and symptomatic of depressed people |
| What are schemas in relation to Beck's negative triad? | -A package of knowldge, which stores information and ideas about ourself and the world around us
The schemas develop during childhood, depressed people possess negative self-schemas which may come from a neative experience, criticism from parents, peers or teachers |
| An example of a negative self-schemas? | -A negative self evaluation schema that constantly remidns them of their worthlessness |
| What happens to negative schemas in adulthood? | They become a cognitve bais which leads to faulty thinking strategies |
| 2 examples of faulty thinking strategies | -Overgeneralisation: holding extreme beliefs on the basis of an single incident and applying it to a different or dissimilar and inappropriate situation
-Absolutist thinking: an 'all-or-nothing' 'good or bad' and 'either-or' approach to viewing the world |
| What did Ellis propose about mental health? | Good mental health is the result of rational thinking
Believed that depressed people blame external events for their own unhappiness and their interpretation of events are then to blame for their depression |
| What are common irrational beliefs? | Mustubatory thinking: certain ideas or assumptions must be true in order to be happy 'I must be successful if I am to consider myself worthwile'
These thoughts underlie much depression and sufferers have based their lives beliefs. |
| What does the ABC in Ellis' model stand for? | A: activating event, an action is affected by
B: beliefs, and individual's beliefs which results in
C: consequence |
| What does 'belief' include? | Irrational thoughts, undesirable emotions, undesirable behaviour |
| Why did Ellis develop the ABC model? | To explain how depression can be a repsonse to negative events. People can react differently to stress and adversity, thus causing depression |
| A strength of the cognitive explantion of depression? | -Reserach evidence that supports Beck's cognitive explanation of depression with the negative triad
-Hammen and Krantz foudnt hat depressed ppts made more error in logic when asked to interpret written material then non-depressed ppts.
-Bates found that depressed ppts who were given negative automic-thought statement became more and more depressed
-These findings support Beck's explanation of depression as shows that there is a positive correlation between negative thinking and depression |
| A strength of the cognitive explanation of dperession? | -Practical applications of the cognitive explanation of depression, for example: therapy
-Cognitive explantion been used to develop effective treatments like: CBT and rational emotive behaviour therapy (REBT) whcih was developed from Ellis' model.
-CBT is consistently found to be the best treatment for depression, especially when used in conjunction with drug treatment
-Means that the cognitive explanation of depression is useful as it can be applied to develop effective therapy techniques to help treat people with depression, by tackling negative thoughts |
| A weakness of the cognitive explanation of depression? | -Increases the stimage of depression due to them placing the blame on the client
-Whilst placing responsibility for their disorder with the client might be helpful, since it provides the power to change the way things aare, there are disadvantages to taking this stance
-Eg: it might lead to the client or the therapist to overlook the role of situational factors in developing depression: stressful life events or family problems that could contribute
-By applying this explanation, its oversimplisity to consider that depression only exisits in the clients mind, meaning that the real or other aspects of life that might link to depression will go on unchanged |
| A weakness of the cognitive explanation of depression? | -Its only a partial explanation
-Seems to be no doubt that depression can triggered by life events that Ellis calls 'activating events'. Such cases are sometimes called reactive depression.
-However, there are many casses of depression that is not traceable to life events and it is not obvious what leads the person to become depressed as a specific time. This called endogenous depression
-Therefore Ellis' ABC model is better for explaining some cases of depression, mainly reactive depression, and can't be applied to all cases |
| A weakness of the cognitive explanation of depression? | -Alternative explantion: like biological origin or genetic inheritance or disruption for neurotransmitters
-Zhang et al conducted reserach on the role of serotonin has found lower levels in patients with depression and also found a gene related to this which is x10 more common with depression
-In addition, drug therapies, including SSRI's which increase the level of serotonin, are found to be effective in the treatment of depression
-This provides support for the role of biological factor sin the development of depression and therefore casts doubt on the cognitive explanation as credible, sole cause of the disorder. |
