Cognitive Approach to Explaining Depression

 The AQA Psychology spec for this segment requires you to be familiar with 2 theories;

1. Beck's negative triad

2. Ellis's ABC Model

In order to make this an interesting task - it can be best to recap on behavioural, emotional and cognitive characteristics of depression that we learned about in the previous lesson. 

We saw that depression can lead to aggression, changed eating behaviour, low mood and low self esteem, poor concentration and a tendency to dwell on the negative.

For homework, you can take one of the two theories mentioned above, read about it in your book on page 150 and draw a diagram or colourful mind map to help you remember and imbed the theory. You can present it to the class and explain any creative additions you included and why they help you remember the theory. 

Beck's negative triad

Beck looked at people's cognitions (the way they think) to explain depression and he came up with some interesting theories.

Faulty Information Processing - this is when the processing that goes on in a depressed person's mind is not normal (faulty). The example often cited here is of someone who won £1 million in the lottery would ignore the positives and point out that someone else won 10 million last week! Depressed people often see the world in terms of black and white thinking, it is either all good or all bad.

Negative self-schema

A schema is a package of ideas - so when someone has a negative self-schema it reflects a general negative self image. The person see's problems and faults with themselves in a lot of regards. Beck claimed that these negative schema come from childhood where rejection or bad experiences lead to the development of negative schema.

The Negative Triad

Psychologist Aaron Beck suggested that people become depressed and develop a negative view of themselves because of three types of thinking called the Negative Triad. 

1. Negative view of the world, e.g. the cost of living crisis and economy are in a terrible state. 

2. Negative view of the future, e.g. the economy is bad and is going to get worse

3. Negative view of the self, e.g. I am a failure and I always have been.

Evidence to support Beck's theory.

There is research to back up Beck's cognitive theory of depression. A study by Grazoili and Terry (2000) that student 65 women for cognitive vulnerability and depression before and after birth. They found that those women to have been high in cognitive vulnerability factors were more likely to suffer post natal depression.

Ellis's ABC Model

Ellis suggested that conditions like anxiety and depression came from irrational thoughts - thoughts that interfere with us being happy and free from pain.

Ellis used the ABC Model to explain how irrational thought affect our behaviour and emotions.

A - Activating Event - this is when an external event or incident triggers irrational thoughts. According to Ellis we get depressed when we experience a negative event and then go on to form irrational beliefs, e.g. failing a test causing a person to believe they will never pass any test, or when a relationship ends they believe they will never fall in love again.

B - Belief's - this is where beliefs are triggered by the event. Ellis identified irrational beliefs, such as the belief that we must always succeed to be "Musturbatory" thinking, e.g. I must always pass every test, everyone must like me, and the belief that follows is that it is a major disaster when something does not go smoothly. Non depressed people would be able to shake off the negative event and move on, but the depressed person believed that everything MUST go well and when it doesn't they feel like failures.

C - Consequences - the consequence of the irrational beliefs is depression. The person never feels good enough, suffers low mood and low self and esteem and develops depression.

Evidence to support Ellis' ABC Model

The main point to support both Ellis' and Beck's models are how they are applied to CBT. CBT is often seen as the most effective way to treat depression.