Question:

Special interest paper should be approximately 12 pages in length, APA format including cover page, abstract, appropriate citation and references. topic should reflect the student’s interest area, consider diversity issues, and should include at least 7 scientific journal article references from respected journals in the area of cognitive science or related fields. The student should begin the assignment by asking question related to their topic of interest (e.i what is conciousness?, how do we develop affect-regulation?, How might cognitive and affective process theories support professional develpment in herapists? ect..

I wanted to do my paper on Depression and the cognitve affect of it.

Answer:

Title: Depression from a Cognitive Perspective

 

Abstract

This paper addresses the subject of depression from a cognitive perspective. First, a highlight is made on the relationship between depression and consciousness. A description is then made on what it entails for depression to be explored from a cognitive perspective. Research trends on cognitive models are explored, and the views of different cognitive theorists are analyzed. A description is also made on how individuals develop affect regulation, particularly the role of infant-caregiver relationships. Lastly, the author explores the ways in which the notion of affect regulation can be used in therapy so as address the problem of depression.

 

Introduction

Today, many people experience depression at one point in their lives. Depression makes one’s life miserable and unbearable, such that treatment is always needed. In this regard, the assistance of a psychologist is normally needed. Through psychologists, individuals hope to understand why they have been affected by depression. Similarly, victims of depression hope that they will get the necessary treatment so as to get out of the miseries of depression. Yet in psychology, there are many perspectives from which the problem of depression can be addressed. This paper explores depression from a cognitive perspective.

Depression and consciousness

Depression is a serious mental illness that affects one’s consciousness. A person with depression experiences extreme, stable moments of sadness and continued lack of interest in nearly all types of activities. However, the term ‘depression’ is also commonly used to describe loneliness, sadness, or even the blues that everyone goes through from time to time. Meanwhile, in cognitive science, severe depression, which is also known as major depression dramatically, lessens an individual’s ability to continue doing activities both at work and in social situations. Victims of depression tend to have feelings of hopelessness, despair, and worthlessness. They also feel like the best thing is to commit suicide.

Consciousness, on the other hand, is an awareness of both the self and the environment. Using consciousness, one is able to react to changes occurring both within the self and in the environment. From a cognitive perspective, people with depression may be said to be lacking in self- and social consciousness. Conscious people have the ability to react to the changes that occur in their own physiques as well as in the environment in which they live. In this regard, depression may be seen as the result of an individual’s ability to organize the changes in both the self and in the immediate environment.

Depression takes many forms. For instance, there is bipolar disorder, also known as manic-depressive illness, in which case an individual’s mood keeps swinging back and forth between mania and depression. There is also seasonal affective disorder, in which case individuals encounter depression only during winter and autumn, when they experience fewer hours of daylight. As for dysthymia, an individual feels depressed, tends to have a low-esteem, and normally has poor concentration most of the time, a problem that may persist for several years. For people with dysthymia, the sysmptoms tend to be milder compared to those of major depression, although they may still occasionally experience episodes of severe depression. Most cognitive psychologists use the term clinical depression to refer to various forms of depression.

Depression from a cognitive perspective

Some forms of depression appear to come unexpected, even when things seem to be going well for an individual. Yet others appear to clearly have an obvious cause, such as financial difficulty, marital conflict, or a personal failure. On the other hand, there are some people who face such problems but do not become depressed. Many cognitive psychologists argue that depression arises as a result of an intricate interaction between the stressful events in one’s life and a person’s psychological vulnerabilities. Those who adopt a cognitive perspective emphasize on the role that irrational thought processes play in bringing about depression.

Aaron Beck, an American psychiatrist once pointed out that people suffer from depression because errors in their thinking makes them view themselves, their future, and their environment in a negative light. These errors arise when focuses on only the negative aspects of a situation or misinterpret facts in a negative way. They may also blame themselves for any misfortunes that befall them. Beck argues that individuals learn these negative ways of perceiving their world during childhood. In Beck’s view, depressed individuals acquire this view after facing social rejection of friends, losing a loved one, defeating criticisms from teachers, and even abusive upbringing from parents. In such a way of thinking, things end up being seen as worse than they may really be. This increases the risk of depression in all stressful situations. Such people expect to fail frequently, blame themselves for these failures, and feel worthless.

Research trends in literature on cognitive models

Robins (2010) observes that research on cognitive theories of depression has tended to neglect both the relationships between various levels of cognitive-personality variables and the interaction of event and person factors. With this in mind, Robins sought to evaluate utility of sing multivariate and interactions of representations of Aaron Beck’s models as well as those of Seligman, Abramson, and Teasdale. The main elements of Beck’s model include biased attention, biased memory, biased processing, biased thoughts, and dysfunctional schemas and attitudes. These elements have been consistently been associated with both the onset and maintenance of depressive tendencies among individuals. Numerous studies have been done to examine all the neural mechanisms underlying the cognitive aspects of depression. However, these findings are yet to be integrated into Beck’s cognitive model.

Seligman, on his part, introduced the theory of ‘learned helplessness’, a cognitive perspective that has contributed greatly to the analysis of depression as well as the search for its treatment. Seligman embarked on the work of expounding on this theory in the 1960s by carrying shock experiments on dogs. Through these experiments, he arrived at the finding that the feeling of helplessness can be conditioned or learned. When dogs were provided with an opportunity to escape from these shocks just before the experiments began, they later on did so when they were presented with this opportunity. Inversely, when these dogs were denied the opportunity to escape from shocks, they later on refrained from attempting to do so even when such an opportunity was presented to them. This made Seligman to believe that people, too, could end up suffering from learned consciousness by exerting little or no effort so as to counter negative situations, mainly because of failed attempts to do so in the past (Seligman, 1984).

For Abramson, depression constitutes a heterogeneous group of disorders. These disorders have negative cognitive characteristics, which, when explained from a cognitive model, constitute a subtype of depression known as negative triad depression (Abramson, 1988). Negative triad depression resembles but is not identical to the sense of ‘hopelessness’ as described by Abramson. Abramson (1988) indicates that negative cognitive depression is a sub-type of depression that takes the form of an intersection of negative triad depression and hopelessness depression. In essence, the underlying argument in this case is aimed at challenging the proposition sometimes expressed in cognitive theory, which stresses on universal applicability to all individuals suffering from depression.

Teasdale (1992) offers an assessment of Beck’s model, arguing that it was founded on a clinical as opposed to scientific perspective. Against this backdrop, Teasdale points out that the model is not adequate as a guiding theory for use in experimenting depression, which is a psychological disorder. For Teasdale (1992), the concepts explained in Beck’s model are too imprecise and vague to be used as a valid basis for experimentation. In this case, Teasdale’s observation was that the imprecise and commonsense language used in Beck’s cognitive model is inadequate as a framework for integrating the concepts and findings of cognitive science with the myriad of cognitive challenges that clinicians face. Teasdale (1992) also has a problem with Beck’s theory upon consideration of the fact that it was derived majorly from clinical observations. The issues of changes that have been made to Beck’s model have also attracted criticism. Teasdale (1992) for instance, claims that these changes have been done in an unsystematic manner.

In Robins’ (2010) study, where a sample of 83 graduates was used, Beck’s model accounted for about 32% of the population variance with regard to depressive symptoms. For the model of learned helplessness, the percentage was 19%. In both cases these figures turned out to be higher than the ones found in studies representing the models in a simpler manner. These findings indicate that there is an association between personal and event variables in depressive symptoms. However, the research study by Robin failed to find out the hypothesized effects of person-event interaction. The clearest finding was the association between event perceptions and the frequency of negative effects. The implication here is that cognitive theories of depression should be conceptualized in such a way that a greater emphasis is put on the objective role played by life events.

In response to the lack of consistent empirical support to Beck’s cognitive model, Teasdale (1988) a closely related, alternative model. In this model, the proposition is that when a person becomes initially depressed, a crucial factor that ultimately determines whether this depression will remain mild, transient, severe, or persistent is the nature of all negative cognitive constructs and processes that become highly active and accessible during the depressed state. These negative cognitive constructs and processes interact with the environmental difficulties, biological factors, and available social support in determining whether a vicious cycle of depression-maintaining cognitive-affective condition will be set up. Positive results have been recorded in studies designed to test the predictions made in this account. Moreover, many prospective studies have yielded results that are consistent with the hypothesis. They have shown that when cognitive measures are administered in the depressed state, they predict the possible future course of a depressive state independently of an individual’s initial level of depression.

In an interesting rejoinder, the issue of sex differences cropped up in Teasdale’s (1988) study, whereby a review was made on the nature of sex differences in depression rates. In addition to the issue of sex differences, a review was also made on the relationship between attributional style and depression as far as compatibility with the hypothesis is concerned. On both of these issues, the outcome shows that the hypothesis offers encouraging preliminary support (Teasdale, 1988).

How individuals develop affect-regulation

Affect regulation is the ability by an individual to increase or maintain positive wellbeing and feelings and to minimize or increasingly regulate defensive states and stressful feelings. Affect regulation therapy is way of dealing with depression, whereby focus is on improving an individual’s ability to produce favorable emotional responses in all situations. It is a way of dealing with the cognitive vulnerability that brings about depressive states. This approach has a bearing on Beck’s cognitive model, which focuses on evaluation of life events that produce intense as opposed to mild forms of depression.

There are two affective states that individuals have to encounter at any point during their lives: pleasant and unpleasant affective states (Martin, 2005). These states are normally sub-categorized into numerous feeling states containing both physiological and cognitive and components. Affect is often distinguished from emotion in that it exhibits a less clear relationship with stimulus, it is longer-lasting, as well as more cognitively complex.

Affect regulation may be understood to have both adaptive and mal-adaptive aspects. Consensus among most modern researchers is that affect regulation should ideally equip an individual with the ability to respond to the diverse demands of the environment. There are seven commonly-cited components that ought to constitute the process of affect regulation. These dimensions include neuro-physiological constituents, construal or interpretation of events, attention processes, regulation of emotional demands, access to coping resources, encoding of emotion cues, and selection of response alternatives.

The point here is that the most important aspect of affect regulation relates to how individuals deal with states prolonged negative arousal/affect. In the case of brief instances of negative arousal, an individual may easily cope through avoidance or use of strategies that reduce such arousal fairly quickly. However, there are situations where the individual finds it impossible to use a problem-solving/affective coping strategy such that the situation continues generating negative affect. In such a situation, the individual experiences a prolonged or chronic state of arousal.

The development of affect regulation is normally viewed to start during childhood, as the infant interacts with the caregiver. In this case, the caregiver is the one who undertakes regulation. With time, this regulation is gradually shifted to the child, who has to learn to rely increasingly on cognitive strategies as his language continues developing. The infant moves from the pre-adapted action systems, for example head aversion and eye-closing to more learned and highly adaptive strategies, which culminate into planned behaviors for regulating affect. Emphasis here is that such learned strategies can best be employed whenever a child’s state of arousal is relatively low. Moreover, when highly aroused, the child should be able to develop the tendency to revert to earlier strategies.

In recent literature on the acquisition and development of affect regulation, focus is on the interaction between the caretaker and the infant (Rusting, 1998). In this regard, attention is on the way this interaction influences the child’s development on the one hand and the way the child’s behaviors affect the response of the caretaker. From this perspective, the infant-caretaker interaction is viewed as having an influence on child’s brain structures, thereby contributing to the infant’s temperament.

It is clear that affect regulation is greatly influenced by the learning context provided by family members as well as other people with whom the infant forges important relationships. Sensitive care-giving, which is associated with an infant’s security of attachment, is important since it helps the child avoid having to reach to the extreme ends of emotional states. When a caregiver is able to understand the infant’s emotional needs and responds to them sensitively, the infant is able to develop an expectation that states of high arousal such as distress can be moderated. This gives the infant a sense of control, whereby he regards his environment as being reasonably predictable. This interaction also makes the infant feel that he is worthy of attention, and this forms the basis of self-esteem.

Sensitive caregiver behavior is also associated with a higher level of positive affect regulation later on in life. Consequently, an individual encounters low levels of negative affect, greater social competence, and greater self-esteem. Insensitive care-giving, in contrast, is associated with higher instances of negative affect in the form of anxiety and anger, lower self-esteem, and lower social competence. When infants are made to feel insecure through insensitive care-giving, they develop avoidance and resistance. Avoidance is associated with hostility while resistance or ambivalence is associated with fearfulness. Whereas avoidant individuals have a suppressing affect, resistant individuals tend to have an exaggerated affect.

There is a lack of systematic studies on how affect regulation develops in individuals beyond the pre-school period. Most of the systematically organized studies dwell on how individuals develop affect regulation during their pre-school years, mainly during caregiver-infant interactions as well as other interactions characterized by close family-social relationships. However, for those studies that dwell on an individual’s development of affect regulation, a recurring theme is on how the individual integrates emotion, behavior, and cognition.

How cognitive and affective regulation helps therapists deal with depression among individuals

An understanding of affect regulation is important in creating an understanding of what causes depression and how to deal with this problem from a professional perspective. One of the areas where the principles of affect regulation are used is affect regulation therapy (ART). ART takes the form of a brief psychotherapy, whereby individuals are assisted on how to make a choice between three main defensive arousal states: fight, flight, and freeze.

Affect regulation also enables counseling professionals help depressed individuals by guiding them through strategies aimed at improving their moods. Such types of assistance ultimately lead to improvement in one’s cognitive functioning, thereby causing transformations in one’s personality. Changes in a depressed individual’s personality occur upon managing to deal with experiences that may have taken the form of a chronic or prolonged state of arousal. Such changes can exhibit themselves through self-expression, socialization, resilience to stress and learning capacity.

Conclusion

In summary, depression is a serious problem that affects many people, making their lives miserable. Many scholars have attempted to address this problem from a cognitive perspective. Among the early contributors is Aaron Beck, who attributed depression to errors in individuals’ thinking, which makes them view virtually everything in their lives in negative light. Some scholars have contributed to Beck’s model, while others have proposed changes to it or even criticized it before coming up with new cognitive model for explaining depression. All in all, affect regulation plays a key role in understanding depression from a cognitive perspective. Studies on the development of affect regulation dwell a lot on the pre-school infant-caregiver relationships, which greatly influence the cognitive strategies that an individual uses to deal with diverse emotional states later on in life.

 

References

Abramson, L. (1988) Hopelessness Depression: A Theory-Based Subtype of Depression, Psychological Review, 96(2), 358-372.

Martin, R. (2005) Cognitive emotion regulation in the prediction of depression, anxiety, stress, and anger, Personality and Individual Differences, 39(7), 1249-1260.

Robins, C. (2010) Cognitive theories of depression viewed from a diathesis-stress perspective: Evaluations of the models of Beck and of Abramson, Seligman, and Teasdale, Cognitive Therapy and Research, 13(4), 297-313.

Rusting, C, 1998, Personality, mood, and cognitive processing of emotional information: Three conceptual frameworks, Psychological Bulletin, 124(2), 165-196.

Seligman, M. (1984) Causal explanations as a risk factor for depression: Theory and evidence, Psychological Review, 91(3), 347-374.

Teasdale, J. (1988) Cognitive Vulnerability to Persistent Depression, Cognition & Emotion, 2(3), 247-274.

Teasdale, J. (1992) Cognitive Models of Depression: The State of the Notion, Psychological Inquiry, 3(3), 269-271.