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Cognitive Approach on Depression - Coggle Diagram
Cognitive Approach on Depression
Main Idea: The patterns of processing information (how someone interprets events) influence the development of the disorder
Aaron Beck's 3 Mechanisms
Cognitive Triad
Self: Feelings of helplessness, worthlessness, and inadequate
World: Interprets the world as unrealistically negative and defeatist way
Future: Future is viewed as totally hopeless because their worthlessness prevents their situation from improving
Negative Self-Schema
Predisposes someone to depression
Acquired through traumatic childhood experiences
Death of a loved one
Parental rejection, criticism, overprotection, neglect, or abuse
Bullying/Exclusion
Activates through stressful life event
Logical Errors
Cherry picks aspects of a situation and ignores equally relevant information
Arbitrary Inference: Negative conclusion without supporting fact
Selective Abstraction: Focusing on the worst of a situation
Magnification and Minimization: Problems seem bigger and solutions seem smaller
Personalization: Negative events are always their fault
Dichtomous thinking: Everything is black and white, no inbetween.
Intensified by cognitive triad
Formed once negative thoughts become automatic
Main Studies
Alloy et al. (1999)
Procedure & Results
Alloy followed the thinking style of Americans in their early 20's for 6 years, placing each of them in either a positive or negative thinking group.
After 6 years, 1% of the positive group developed depression, and 17% of the negative group developed depression, suggesting a link between thinking style and depression
Evaluation
May suffer from demand characteristics; correlational instead of causational; precise role of cognitive processes are yet to be determined
Maladaptive conditions in depressed people may be a consequence rather than a cause
Aim
To evaluate if cognitive thinking style could be a predictor for depression
Martin Seligman (1974)
Aim
Evaluate the theory of learned helplessness, which is passivity in a negative situation upon learning escape is futile.
This persists even when escape becomes possible
Procedure & Results
If it was leashed, then the dog would learn that escape is futile and would cease its attempts.
Seligman placed a dog on a floor that would then deliver shocks to it. If the dog was not leashed, then it would learn to escape.
The leashed dog began exhibiting depressive symptoms shortly after
Applying this to humans, Seligman claimed that depressed people can give up trying to change their environment because they learned they lack control
Evaluation
Although Seligman's account explains depression to an extent, it fails to account for cognitions
Abramson, Seligman, and Teasdale (1978)
Theory
The researchers proposed 3 dimensions to attributing failure
Locus (internally within the self or externally in the situation?)
Stability (stable and permanent or unstable and transient?)
Global or specific (whole person or some particular characteristic?)
People who attribute failure to internal, stable, and global causes are more likely to be depressed than people who attribute it to external, unstable, and specific causes
Benefits
Erases assumption that negative effects guaranteed depressive state
Contradicts the conclusion that people cannot change for the better
Other Studies
Joiner et al (1996)
Theorized that patterns of cognition must be in response to environmental stimuli in order to lead to depression
Nolen-Hoeksema (2000)
Rumination predicts the onset of depression rather than duration. Though, if combined with negative cognitive styles, it can predict the duration of depressive symptoms
Farb et al (2011)
Relapsing patients showed more activity in the medial prefrontal gyrus, which were linked to higher rumination