Depression Learning

Teaching Adaptive Behaviors for Depression Sufferers

Cognitive therapy is the leading therapy today to treat depression symptoms. Albert Ellis developed cognitive theory. Albert Ellis was not satisfied with chemotherapy as the sole therapy that made claims of curing depression through the uses of antidepressants. His research done in the 1970’s, did not find that chemotherapy proved successful in regulating the imbalance in the chemical neurotransmitters in the brain. He found that instead of a decrease in depression because of the use of chemotherapy, there was in fact, an increased in cases reported. Albert Ellis was concerned with the prevalence of suicides and the tremendous effort of setting up and maintaining suicide prevention centers all over the country

Ellis further deduced that not all depressed people responded to antidepressant drugs. Some depressed individuals refused to take the medication and several people tried the medication only to end up with serious side effects. Another possibility that concerned Ellis was what is known as attribution. He was very concerned that people with depressive disorders would rely on the drugs and attribute any improvement to external forces and not understand that they had the ability to improve their own lives through their own thought processes without having to rely on drugs. He was afraid that patients would not feel empowered by their own hard work and ingenuity to heal themselves, instead they would give up their power in favor of a chemical agent. As a result, these patients would be not develop good coping skills.

Ellis was convinced that there was a need for a therapy that would deal with cognitive processes and social interactions and therefore a talking therapy was essential. With cognitive therapy a person would learn to use coping skills. Furthermore they would be able to use these skills over and over again as new situations occurred, thus potentially averting any new bouts of depression.

Cognitive therapy is brief therapy, which is an active and direct approach that treats several mental conditions such as panic disorders, phobias and depression. How this theory works is that a person shapes his or her world based on assumptions which Ellis called schemas. These assumptions are formulated from past experiences. These schemas become core beliefs and everything the patient will do will be based on these believes.

Cognitive therapy is designed to address these core beliefs when they become maladaptive behaviors. Cognitive therapy will apply logic to distorted views of reality. For example, a depressed person usually sees the world in black and white, it has to be one way or it is the other. Since they are depressed the way the world has to be is negative. They may see individuals as being successes or failures there is no in between. They may internalize individual events in character flaws. For example, one burnt dinner may escalate into thinking that all attempts at making dinner will fail, they are a failure ad a cook and that may even escalate into they are a failure as a wife.

The cognitive therapist attempts to point out these irrational thoughts in order to eliminate the feelings of inadequacy and therefore reduce and eliminate the depression. Cognitive therapy focuses on correction irrational thought patterns, getting a patient to understanding the connections between thoughts and actions and the underlying emotions that precipitated the thoughts and actions. Patients are given the tools to exam the facts before jumping to conclusions. They also learn to come up with alternative approaches to the situation at hand, which are more reality based.

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