Famous Theories of Depression

Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory of Depression

Psychologist Albert Bandura's developed a social cognitive theory of depression, which suggested that people are shaped and influenced by their interactions between behaviors, thoughts and environmental factors. He stated human behavior is largely a product of learning. Bandura emphasized how depressed people’s self concepts are different from those not suffering depression and those depressed tend to hold themselves responsible for every bad thing they had a fixation with self-blame. On the other hand people suffer from depression tend to view success as a triumph caused by outside factors, leading to levels of low self esteem. Due this people with depression usually set their goals too high and then feel hopeless when they don’t reach them. The repeated sense of failure overwhelms their life and leads to cognitive depression. Bandura believes the interaction between the outside world and their low-self esteem is the main cause for depression.

Julian Rotter’s Theory of Depression

Rotter’s theory focuses on the concept of locus of control. The concept of locus of control believes that people feel they can’t alter of affect their situations and they are manipulated and control by external factors. This is referred to as an external locus of control. Rotter believes people who suffer form depression believe they can’t control their situation and circumstances and are controlled by their environment leading to a continuous sense of helplessness and a low self-esteem. Rotter’s theory mainly believes in the sense of helplessness an external locus of control creates and causes in an individual leading to a state of depression.

Aaron Beck’s Theory of Depression

According to Aaron Beck, negative thoughts, generated by dysfunctional beliefs are the primary causes of depressive symptoms. He believes there is a direct relationship between the amount of negative thoughts someone has and the severity of their depressive symptoms. He strongly suggests the more negative thoughts someone has the more depressed that person will become. Beck also supports the idea that there are three main ways depressed people think

1) I am defective or inadequate

2) All my experiences result in failure

3) The future has no hope

The three of these thinking styles combined make up the Negative Cognitive Triad. Beck states that when these three beliefs are present depression most likely will occur. The negative trias beliefs lead to a sense of self-helplessness and self-failure, which dominates in a depressed persons state of mind. Beck also believes this thinking style makes depressed people focus more on the negative aspects of their reality to confirm their “failure”. Beck concludes that negative thinking style leads to negative lifestyle and self-helplessness, which dominates cognitive depression and blocks out any positive vibes.

Martin Seligman Theory of Depression

Martin Seligman accidentally discovered an unexpected relationship between human depression and dogs, while studying learning in dogs and fear. Seligman studied what happened when a dog was allowed to escape shock from a designated area, during the second part of his experiment Seligman positioned the conditioned dog into a box with two compartments divided by a low fence. Even though the dog could easily jump the fence, the dog lay down when the shock was being administered. The conditioned dog had learned that trying to escape the shocks was useless and learned to be “helpless”. This experiment form Seligman’s theory of learned helplessness, which was extended to human in order to explain depression. Seligman believes depressed people have learned to be helpless and depressed and feel they have no control over their environment, just like the dog had no control over the shocks. Seligman also concluded that depressed people tend to have a more pessimistic thinking style which leads to a predominating negative aura in your life. Seligman states that prolonged exposure to negative experiences contributes to a pessimistic thinking style and eventually depression.

Source:http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=13008&cn=5

The Lobotomist-Walter Freeman

The program The Lobotomist focuses on Dr. Walter Freeman, the creation of the lobotomy procedure and the consequences this brought to his career. Dr. Walter Freeman desired to treat the hundreds of psychiatric patients that needed help during the twentieth century. These poor patients lived under horrible conditions in warehouses where they were treated inhumanly and had no hope for a better future. Dr. Walter Freeman started the perfection of the lobotomy in search of a cheaper and accessible cure for psychiatric patients. He wanted to provide a miraculous cure for them. Dr. Freeman started improving a Portuguese neurologist technique call the lobotomy, which would reduce the severity of psychotic symptoms. At a fast rate he would sleep patients insert an ice pick trough their peeled eyeball and lid. He would then tap the ice pick with a surgical hammer and break through the orbital cavity of the eye to the prefrontal lobe. He would wiggle the ice pick to sever the frontal lobes and then finally end the procedure. The procedure would leave patients emotionless and with severely bruised eyes for several days. The procedure seemed to “cure” several patients and take away their maniac style for sometime. The lobotomy was soon employed around asylums in the united states where Freeman quickly acquired a reputation for curing mentally ill and even performed 40 lobotomies a day. Walter Freeman was also characterized for performing for large crowds to impress them and create a medical shock. Freeman was in the height of his career when several patients developed complications and even died from hemorrhages during the procedure. Dr. Freeman even killed a patient when carelessly taking a picture during the ice pick perforated his brain. Soon Freeman’s reputation ended and the “pill” was developed. The pill had the same effect as the lobotomy and had reduced consequences and did not include any dangerous procedure. A decade later the procedure was viewed as barbaric and Freeman was ordered to halt any procedures in asylums or hospitals. Freeman was soon rejected by the board of doctors and viewed as a moral monster. Many claim Freeman was driven by ambition but I personally believe his first intentions were honest and he was offering the only available cure to those hopeless patients. Freeman was destroyed when America began to view him as a monster, his career had ended horribly. I believe Freeman greatly contributed to the treatment of mentally ill patients and should always be attributed with that recognition, even though his procedure was not medically ethical it was the only option at that time.

The Lobotomist: A review - The Scientist - Magazine of the Life Sciences http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/54179/#ixzz1HC0NtJqo

Boy Interrupted

The film Boy Interrupted focuses on the intimate story of Evan Harris, which suffers from bipolar disease. His parents, Hart and Dana, which record Evan’s marked change in attitude, and his maniac cycles, created the film. I personally find very intriguing how they mentioned Evan’s degree of happiness equaled his intensity of anger or sadness. In the film you can see how the nuclear family like his stepbrother and parents struggle with the severe mood swings and tried to help him grip the illness. I believe taking Evan to the medical institute which treated bipolar was a smart choice because sometimes something so delicate needs to be supervised by medical figures. I also find very interesting how even though Evan was receiving medical treatment and visiting a psychiatrists and was achieving good grades in New York and even won the Science fair, inside he was falling apart. I believe to a certain point there is not much the parents and family can do because like Evan he kept his feelings to himself and only recorded his true emotions in his diary. The way even died I believe was very tragic and the fact that he had a prior argument with his mom, probably makes Dana feel guilty. Though I believe it was no one’s fault and Evan was aware he was going to have to dealt with that interior struggle all his life and wanted to put an end to the suffering. In the funeral it was very hard watching all the family crumble apart and special the grandmother, which felt she was living the story of her bipolar son once again. I believe for Evan’s family communication should be very important and the escape of all sadness and guilt. I believe Evan’s story should be a lessons and warning for all those family’s dealing with members, which suffer from bipolar, Evan’s story should embrace the need of medical help and the fact that his decision to end with his life was not fully controlled by him but by his disorder. Boy Interrupted truly portrays the struggle of the Perry’s family and their love towards Evan.

Internal Assessment - The Stroop Effect

The Stroop Effect is a very controversial and interesting effect first publishes by John Ridley Stroop in the 1930’s. Stroop at first created two classic experiments in the first he compared reading a list of words printed in black and reading the same list of words printed in different colored ink. Stroop found little difference in reading time between the two lists. Stroop then compared the naming of colors for a list of solid colored squares with the naming of a list of words printed in different colored ink. He then found in an average the participant took 74% longer to name ink colors for the incongruent words. This effect’s main purpose is to demonstrate the interference in which the brain experiences slowed processing time because it is trying to sort trough the information being received, meaning that the brain is trying to multitask. The Stroop Effect mainly consists of giving an individual a list of words printed in different color ink and asked to name the color of the ink used to print the word, not the word. When ask to do this the participant will experience a delayed reaction time because the brain is processing the conflicting information. The brain is trying to suppress the input or meaning of the word and focus on the ink color of the word instead.

The results of these two studies led Stroop to conclude that since people are more practiced at word reading than naming colors, there is less interference with word reading than with color naming.

Testing on the Stroop Effect is down trough Strop Testing and when one test is performed in a language learner beginner or a young children that still doesn’t know exactly how to read the participants have no problem quickly naming the colors of the ink. While people who have learned to read and analyze language had difficulty with the list of words. This happens due to the interference in the brain and the slowed processing time this causes.

Stroop Testing data is very easy to collect and can be collected on the basis of how long it takes for the participant to work trough the list of colored words. The effect is so strong and constant that Stroop Testing is used several times in psychological testing and assessment. People are often introduced to the test when beginning psychology class because they can easily learn and observe how the brain works and processes information. This test can also be used to Asses mental acuity for a job or after a patient has experienced a certain degree of brain injury. Many people are very surprised when they first see the Stroop Effect results and how a simple task like identifying colors is truly a slight complicated for the brain. The truth is the Stroop Effect demonstrates that if two pathways are active simultaneously and the pathway that leads to the response is stronger (naming words) there is no interference. Though if two pathways are active at the same time the pathway that leads to the response is weaker (naming the colored ink) and there is interference.

Even though the Stroop effect has been investigated ins several ways and replicated several times it is harshly criticized for being very strict or robust due to the fact that it only extends to color-related words and does not include words that sound like the colors word (wred.bloo). In summary the difficulty of removing the interference present in the Strop effect between a words name and meaning and the inks color has lead some researcher’s to claim that the brain is wired to recognize words unconsciously. This explanation is called the “automatic word recognition hypothesis” and can be classified as the only answer to the Stroop Effect.

Sources

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-stroop-effect.htm

http://www.rit.edu/cla/gssp400/sbackground.html

The Magic of the Placebo Effect

The placebo effect can be known and characterized as a sham or lie by several people when in reality they forget it's use is usually in benefit of society and natural cure. The truth is a placebo can be better defined as an effect that has a measurable or truly experienced improvement in health. A placebo effect includes no cure or treatment at all. A great and simple example of a placebo effect for medical purposes can be fake surgeries or pills. These pills or surgeries would produce an effect similar to that expected to be experienced by the genuine procedure or medicine.

This amazing discovery and effective idea was first reported by Henry k. Beecher in 1955. Henry first experimented with abut 800 different studies over time. One of his most famous controversial studies was done on patients that presented a cold. These patients were given a placebo and experienced an improvement in six days. However in general cases all patients of a cold experience an improvement in 6 days with or with no medication. Beecher did not report all of the data from his experiment and left out the fact that forty percent of the time the condition of the patients worsened.

In addition, the examination of Beecher's work determined that he reported only on the percentage of conditions that showed improvement from placebo, not the percentage that deteriorated. Yes, one-third of the time conditions improved while on, but not necessarily because of, placebo; however, about 40 percent of the time conditions worsened. Beecher did not report all the data. After this experiment people became very intrigued and Beecher along with researchers created another experiment on a group of three groups of patients. One group did not receive medicine, a second group was given a placebo and the last group received no treatment. The results of the placebo and no treatment groups matched 100 percent of the time. This proved the power of the placebo accompanied with imagination.

Even though placebo effects have been thoroughly and long studied many people still believe there is no adequate evidence from studies to prove that the new drugs are more effective than placebos. The reality of studies on placebos effect is very complicated due to the fact that a number of factors can affect many treatments and the evaluation of those treatments making hard to find out what produces or is perceived as improvement. Another factor that greatly affects this studies are the participants behavior and how in several cases they behave differently to please the researcher. Many researchers such as Dr. Hróbjartsson believe the reported high levels of placebo effects are in reality flawed research methodology. The main flaw is how many studies prove a surgery or a procedure or medicine is not necessary but don’t really demonstrate the placebo effect was indeed successful. The solution is using a third control group, which receives no treatment at all. If the placebo effect receives better results than the third group, then the placebo effect is proved effective. The biggest error in placebo studies are due to the small samples used and the participants who constantly try to please the researcher.

I personally believe even though many studies based on placebos effect have demonstrated great flaws the truth is placebo effects due have a great or very high rate of effectiveness. This is due to the power of the mind and the psychological factor in which our beliefs about what’s going to happen to us permits us perceive a deep transformation without relying on drugs. Many studies like the Sapiristein have even found 50 percent of the drug effect is due mostly to the placebo effect. A person’s belief and hopes on a certain treatment may have a significant biochemical effect. We can be conditioned to release substances as endorphins and adrenaline that will serve as a pain relief and will stimulate an improvement. Even though the placebo effect isn’t entirely psychology the majority f its effectiveness lies in the power of the mind and our ability to control it.

Sources:

http://www.skepdic.com/placebo.html

http://www.chiro.org/nutrition/FULL/Debunking_the_Placebo.shtml

Are All memories Alike?

We sometimes wonder if all memories are alike and if so why are some people just better at remembering EVERYTHING. The question has been answered all memories are different and are triggered by the individuals characteristics, it's sex gender and its cultural background.

Psychologists Agneta Herlitz and Jenny Rehnman in Stockholm also wondered if one's sex affected it's ability to remember things. Trough certain tests they discovered that significant sex differences in episodic memory which is a type of long term memory that focuses on personal experiences. The findings discovered this memory favors women. Certain results demonstrated woman were significantly better in verbal episodic memory and in verbal episodic memory tasks such as remembering words or pictures. While men outperformed women in remembering symbolic and non linguistic information. Another test performed by the psychologists which involved presenting three group of participants faces found that women were able to remember the female faces more accurately. this concludes women are better than men at remembering faces especially female faces. Several other studies also demonstrated women are better at tasks requiring no verbal processing. The results suggest that the female gender hold an advantage in episodic memory demonstrating all memories are NOT alike.

Studies have found that not only does sex influence our ability to remember things but our cultural background does as well. Don't we all recall our childhood memories differently well researchers have found that the average age of difference in memory varies widely from person to person and that the average age of first memories varies up two to years between cultures. Michelle Leichtman, PhD, a psychologist at the University of New Hampshire who studied childhood memory states that the function of the meaning of memory or it's importance varies between a particular cultural system. The way parents and other adults talk or don't talk or recall memories influences the way children will later remember those events. People who grow up in a society that stresses personal history or focuses on family history will often have earlier childhood memories that people who grow up in cultures that value interdependence or talk little about shared memories and events. In 1994, psychologist Mary Mullen, PhD published the first research comparing the ages of first memories across cultures. in the study she asked more than 700 Caucasian and Asian or Asian-American undergraduates to describe their earliest memories. Mullen--a Harvard University graduate student at the time--found that on average the Asian and Asian-American students' memories happened six months later than the Caucasian students' memories. This doesn't mean Caucasian's have better memory it just means people have the type of memory that allows them get along better in their cultural environment.

Trough several studies performed in the last decade psychologists can prove that memories do vary depending on a persons sex and its cultural and environmental traditions and needs. This proves no memories are alike and we all view and recall our childhood and past memories differently.

Sources

http://www.apa.org/monitor/sep05/culture.aspx

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080220104244.htm

Alzheimer's EVERYONES concern

I personally believe a big part of me, who I am and what I feel and think relies on my mind and especially my memories. These memories have helped and shaped my present personality and make-up my true essence. When I think back on my childhood or nice family memories I realize this are the memories that influence me daily these past experiences truly shape me. I can't imagine finding out progressively all these memories and important characters in my life will be erased because I’ll forget them and worse of all to find out there is no cure for the disease only pills that can slow the progress of it. I would feel so frustrated and powerless knowing my life and my identity would change so drastically. I believe one of the worse consequences of Alzheimer's is the drastic change in personality of the victims how many of them become very violent and easily irritated without really being aware. This change in personality not only affects the victim but in my opinion it deeply hurts the people surrounding them like family or old friends that have to watch the person's true essence vanish away. A great example is the video we watched during class in which a man suffering of Alzheimer was sent to a clinic and forgot he had wife and openly flirted with another lady. One day his wife arrived and had to endure watching him with another women. I personally can't imagine how much it must hurt and affect emotionally to watch the person you've known and loved for so long change so much. For reasons like this I believe one of Alzheimer's worse consequences is the change in attitude or personality as a consequence of a progressive decline in memory.

Alzheimer's is a disease that not only takes away your true identity and memories but completely ends with your independence and free will or liberty. Alzheimer's is a difficult disease that not only leads to death at a certain point but forces the patient to endure various pains and sufferings. Personally I believe Alzheimer’s is a disease that ends with a persons true identity and can be very treacherous. I would definitely not like to experience or witness anyone suffer from this disease due to the fact that it is not only very harmful but has little or no cure. As stated in the new research for understanding Alzheimer's posted in Time's there is little knowledge over what cause or influences Alzheimer's and there is little money being provided for research. The fact that there is no true cure for this disease is very frustrating and should be a concern for everyone because do to it's mystery and uncertainty we never know if we one day may suffer of it. Alzheimer's is a very hard emotional and physical disease to endure and it should be everyone’s concern.