Depression is one of the mood disorders and is a distorted mood or negative mood caused by complex imbalance in the activity in the brain or external circumstances. Therefore, those factors causing the aforementioned imbalance or negative mood can be considered as causing depression or contributing to it. It is not yet clear according to Barlow & Durand (2005) because depression has been evidenced even in 3-month old babies. However, 60% to 80% of the causes of depression can be attributed to psychological experiences according to Barlow & Durand (2005), who also adds that the cases are unique to individuals. According to the author, the major reasons that could be blamed for psychological disorders are stress and trauma resulting from life events such as loss of a job, having a child, getting divorced, and starting a career, but more importantly, individual reactions and the settings play a very important role in determining the developments. For example, some individuals sees loosing a job as opportunity to working out their hobbies, while others may be depressed because they already have a family to care for after loosing a job.
Depression is a negative emotional state arising from, usually, subconscious thoughts pulled out of the “store of thoughts” to explain circumstances. Perhaps, the implication can be well understood in considering that the cognitive therapy modules are designed to help individuals change the ways one think. This is a systematic process because, for example, negative thoughts may have been repeated overtime and for long, thus becoming automatic thoughts applied by people to respond to most conditions and circumstances or happenings in life. Maladaptive and erroneous processing of information causes depression. The individuals have faulty assumptions and beliefs arising from the biased thinking. Family experiences which are traumatic and historic may cause people to develop negative memories and cognition which cause sadness, depression or anxiety (Sarasola Mental Health Institute, 2008).
Negative core beliefs, low self-esteem and family history have been indicated as causatives of depressions. Family history has been connected to the changing in the structure of the brain and its functioning. Negative core beliefs are implicated in causing depression in that it influence thoughts, which in turn generate negative emotional states.
Cognitive approach to depression focuses on the self-repressive critical self-evaluations, pessimism, and unrealistic expectations and perceptions. These do not only establish depression but also sustain it. Cognitive approach to treating depression helps individuals change these behaviors and feelings, develop more positive assessment and develop positive life goals. Defense mechanisms expresses unconscious id whose impulses’ expression in behavior cause anxiety. When an individual represses conflict issues or has a decay of memory, unconscious thoughts (which are any mental contents and functions that are out of awareness) may emanate, according (Kihlstrom, Barnhardt & Tetaryn, 1992; Buci, 1997; qtd. in Blatt & Auerbach, 2000). Cognitive elements such as desires, personal evaluations, fears, attitudes, and expectations have been linked to human behavior and each affect the other. Therefore, cognitive approach to depression may link with behavioral explanations as well.
Historically, depression has been indicated to occur as a response to a perceived loss or imaginary loss and self-critic of ego according to Freud (1917). Cognitive approach to depression explain the causes of maladaptive cognitions as variety of life experiences such as distressful life events, family experiences, lack of proper social learning and shortage of adaptive learning.
When a person is depressed, he has a tendency of taking responsibility for all that goes wrong while he gives others credit for positive-appearing things. According to psychologists, the result of self-criticism in depressed persons may be a sense of failure, low self-esteem and criticism. Negative self-evaluation in Mary is well evident in her comments that she can’t find anyone who love her and has nothing special to offer. Negative self-evaluation may be as a result of perceived loss and family experiences that make one feel inadequate.
Another cognitive aspect of depression is identification of skill deficits where, in addition to identifying the shortage of skills, the person assumes that he or she cannot learn to act differently or achieve better results. Shortage of skills may be right, and this makes the person under depression assume that other deficits are real too. Therefore, the cause of depression on this line may be a real shortage of skills, accompanied by negative self-evaluation because the individual is more likely to see the negative aspects or the skills he lacks than those that he has. In the case study, Mary cannot see the achievement of being a graduate but recognizes that the award is without honors, he is not beautiful but was only referred to as being pretty. Causes of depression attacking an individual in this way have an influence on individuals’ values and how they feel about themselves. Life experiences and traumatic incidences may also make the individual to identify mostly with the negative aspects in his life than the positive aspects, or feel inadequate.
Unrealistic expectations cause individuals to always focus on the negative aspects of life even when the overall experience was good. In other words, these individuals focus almost always on the negative events, conditions, practices or thoughts. They evaluate incidences on an overall, based on the happening of a few bad incidences or only one incidence. These individuals may always want and expect perfection, and hence the frustration after failure, because life ahead of them may be full of imperfect situations. The individuals fail to consider or appreciate the fact that wrong things, incidences, practices and results can be repaired, corrected, started again or mended and that mostly in most of life incidences on an average scale, only a little things may be amiss. Negative self-talks may be a way of immobilizing someone to solve problems, and may result in depression. Although self-talk is normal, sometimes healthy, a process of thinking and helpful if positive, negative self-talk may impact negatively to our ability to solve problems arising and see ourselves as incapable. Negative automatic thoughts can also influence someone’s perspective of the surrounding, the people he meets with and how they relate to him. Negative automatic thoughts, like positive ones may not offer a chance for an analysis of the encountered situation or incidence, and goes ahead to judge them as presumed. If negative, automatic thoughts may cause individuals to reach a quick analysis of a situation such as people hate them or dislike them, for example when people smile at them talking, a quick negative thought would estimate that they are laughing at them rather than for example, being impressed by them. The impact of quick negative thoughts may be low self-evaluation and low attitude which have been linked to depression.
Because every person needs to cope to the world not only through physical encounter but also assumptions, perceptions and judgment, cognitive distortion manifesting through wrong or false evaluation of situations may cause depression or worsen the state of a person under depression. People may carry false assumptions about how people think about them, may over-generalize simple mistakes, or carry irrational ideas about incidences or situations (Donald, 2003).
According to Blatt and Auerbach (2000), dynamic unconsciousness which have intentionally been excluded from awareness by the individual, may manifest through unusual circumstances like dream formation, experimental primation, therapeutic process and free association. As individuals conflict with their personality issues, they may adopt defense mechanisms that repress dynamic unconsciousness. The dynamic unconscious mental contents so excluded include certain wishes or feelings that contradict with his or her other wishes or feelings. The drive of the id is suppressed by the superego (personality component holding all internalized moral standards and ideals) which is implanted in individuals by their parents. Shortly after birth, ego (personality component responsible for dealing with reality) is developed. Some individual states such as anxiety would develop when the id or the superego challenges the conscious ego. Freud’s conceptualization of development of defense mechanisms that are applied to ward off anxiety may be implicated in the theory of depression, specifically because those individuals who are depressed may show denial objective reality that is apparent to others even through erroneous interpretation of events, conditions, or circumstances. For example, loss of an immediate family member may cause people to develop most of the symptoms of major depressive episode: denial, anxiety an emotional numbness (Barlow & Durand, 2005). When severe grieving proceeds for more than a year, there is low likelihood of recovery without treatment. In addition, repression-which is the blocking of disturbing wishes, thoughts or experiences from conscious awareness-may be present in the depression status. Under such circumstance, depression may occur because the grieving process was ineffective.
References
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- Sarasola Mental Health Institute. (2008). Cognitive Therapy is Effective in Treating Depression and Anxiety.