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Cognitive Etiology of Major Depressive Disorder - Coggle Diagram

- - - - Negative view of SELF
      - Negatiive view of the WORLD
      - Negative view of the FUTURE
      - interferes with normal cognitive processing, leading to impairments in perception, memory and problem solving with the person becoming obsessed with negative thoughts
      - ACQUIRING a cognitive triad will not necessarily develop depression
    - - They possess a set of beliefs and expectations about themselves that are essentially negative and pessimistic
      - Negative schemas may be acquired in childhood as a result of a traumatic event
      - Experiences might contribute to negative schemas:
        
        Death of a parent or sibling
        
        Parental rejection, criticism, overprotection, neglect or abuse
        
        Bullying at school or exclusion from peer group
      - Once the negative schema are activated a number of illogical thoughts or cognitive biases seem to dominate thinking
    - - Arbitrary Inference, drawing a negative conclusion in the absence of supporting data
      - Selective Abstraction, focusing on the worst aspects of any situation
      - Magnification and Minimisation, if they have a problem they make it appear bigger than it is. If they have a solution they make it smaller
      - Personalization, negative events are interpreted as their fault
      - Dichotomous Thinking, everything is seen as black and white. There is no in between
      - When a person's stream of automatic thoughts is very negative you would expect a person to become depressed. Quite often these negative thoughts will persist even in the face of contrary evidence
  - - - followed the thinking styles of young Americans in their early 20's for 6 years. Their thinking style was tested and they were placed in either the 'positive thinking group' or 'negative thinking group'
        
        after 6 years the researchers found that only 1% of the positive group developed depression compared to 17% of the 'negative' group. These results indicate there may be a link between cognitive style and development of depression
        
        however such a study may suffer from demand characteristics. These results are correlational. It is important to remember that the precise role of cognitive processes is yet to be determined.
        
        the maladaptive cognitions seen in depressed people may be a consequence rather than a cause of depression
    - - proposed a cognitive explanation of depression called learned helplessness
        
        According to Seligman's learned helplessness theory, depression occurs when a person learns that their attempts to escape negative situations make no difference
        
        As a consequence they become passive and will endure aversive stimuli or environments even when escape is possible
        
        Seligman based his theory on research using dogs
        
        A dog put into a partitioned cage learns to escape when the floor is electrified. If the dog is restrained whilst being shocked it eventually stops trying to escape
        
        Dogs subjected to inescapable electric shocks later failed to escape from shocks even when it was possible to do so. Moreover, they exhibited some of the symptoms of depression found in humans (lethargy, sluggishness, passive in the face of stress and appetite loss)
        
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    - - Abramson, Seligman, and Teasdale (1978) consequently introduced a cognitive version of the theory by reformulating learned helplessness in term of attributional processes (i.e. how people explain the cause of an event)
        
        The depression attributional style is based on three dimensions, namely:
        
        LOCUS: whether the cause is internal - to do with a person themselves, or external - to do with some aspect of the situation)
        
        STABILITY: whether the cause is stable and permanent or unstable and transient
        
        GLOBAL or SPECIFIC: whether the cause relates to the 'whole' person or just some particular feature characteristic
        
        the mere presence of a negative event was not considered sufficient to produce a helpless or depressive state
        
        Abramson et al. argued that people who attribute failure to internal, stable, and global causes are more likely to become depressed than those who attribute failure to external, unstable and specific causes
        
        this is due to the former attributional style (external, unstable and specific) leads people to the conclusion that they are unable to change things for the better
        
        Example 1: Someone stole your cellphone (external)
        
        Example 2: you were in a notoriously unsafe environment (unstable)
        
        Example 3: you were randomly chosen for the theft (specific)