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Cognitive Theory of Depression

Cognitive behavioral therapy is a specific approach to psychology that is often used in combination with antidepressants or all by itself. This behavioral therapy has been found to respond very well to depression, especially helping to cure depression that is not biology based. Cognitive behavioral therapy is helpful with depression because therapists have become well acquainted with the thoughts that depression seems to be dependent on.

  1. Cognition

    • Cognition is a branch of psychology that was created in response to behaviorism, in which people's thoughts and emotions are considered more important than conditioned behavior. With depression, cognition behavioral therapists try to look at the thoughts that occur during depression and how they relate to the depression at hand.

    Negative Thoughts

    • Negative thoughts occur more commonly when individuals suffer from depression. Negative thoughts focus on an individual's feelings of worthlessness, failures and pessimism about the future. For instance, if a person is depressed and experiences a breakup, the individual will think that she isn't a good date and will never have a successful relationship. These thoughts can be countered with positive thinking.

    Information Processing Bias

    • Depressed individuals feel absolute about their experiences. Pondering whether or not things will get better, those who are depressed believe that their lives will never get better. Anything bad that happens is the focus, and anything good is ignored or explained away as only temporary. These individuals also only see everything as black or white. Thus, every single person either loves or hates the depressed person.

    Lack of Self-Efficacy

    • Most individuals have a bias in which they see themselves as responsible for positive outcomes while blaming negative outcomes on external factors. In contrast, depressed individuals see negative outcomes as their fault and see positive outcomes as the result of random forces outside their control. Depressed individuals also sometimes feel that they have no control over anything.

    Learned Helplessness

    • A study conducted by Martin Seligman in 1965 found that dogs who discovered that they could prevent electric shocks by leaping over a fence would respond to the electric shocks by leaping over the fence. But once the fence was blocked off, the dogs would simply lay down and endure the shocks. This study suggests that some individuals who lose their escapes begin to believe that they are now helpless. For instance, someone might see his job as the only source of income and will believe that after losing their job, he will never find another source of income again.

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