OCR Psychology A Level Book 2 sample

Background Alternatives to the medical model Topic 3 The specification requires that you study explanations of mental illness that are alternatives to the medical model. Five alternative explanations are identified. You are required to know the behaviourist and cognitive explanations plus one other (humanistic, psychodynamic or cognitive neuroscience). On this spread we look at the cognitive explanation of mental illness. This spread covers the essential information you will need on background for the exam but you also need to link the background to issues and debates and to the key research. We will look at these links on page 46. Cognitive principles Internal processes The cognitive explanation was developed, in part, from criticisms that behaviourist explanations did not take into account people’s thought processes—behaviourism only focused on observable behaviours. According to cognitive theorists, it is not an external event itself that causes a mental illness, it is the individual’s interpretation of that event that is key to understanding their mental illness. This explanation proposes that the way we think about ourselves and others, and how we perceive our experiences, are the causes of mental illness. Irrational thinking Cognitive explanations of mental illness assume that faulty or irrational thinking (cognitions) are the root cause of abnormal behaviour. For example, a person may believe that everyone dislikes them. This leads to negative feelings about the self which affect behaviour, leading to a downward spiral. Even if the original perception was correct it is the self-beliefs that are damaging. A cognitive therapist might suggest, for example, ‘Why does everyone have to like you?’ The cognitive explanation therefore champions treatments that involve changing an individual’s cognitions so they are more rational. Cognitive explanation of major depression Since depression is very much characterised by negative thoughts , the cognitive area seems a particularly appropriate way to explain it. Beck’s cognitive triad One of the most influential cognitive explanations for depression was developed by Aaron Beck (1967). Beck argued that patients with depression make a series of cognitive errors, forming what he referred to as the cognitive triad . The cognitive triad is a pessimistic and irrational view that the patient holds about the self, the future and the world: • The self – The individual believes that they are worthless or the person has negative self-concepts, for example feeling unattractive or not likeable. • The future – The individual thinks the future is going be negative, such as thinking they will never find the right partner or job. • The world – The individual thinks that everyone around them, and every situation is negative, for example if a friend cancels a get-together the individual interprets this as a sign that no one likes them. These beliefs then form negative cognitive schemas . Such schemas are preconceptions of situations where the patient expects the situation to be negative and therefore interprets it negatively. Negative schemas lead to systematic cognitive biases in thinking. For example, individuals over-generalise, drawing a sweeping conclusion regarding self-worth on the basis of one small piece of negative feedback. They also may attribute successes to external factors and minimise their importance, whereas failures are likely to be overemphasised and blamed on themselves. Beck explains that these negative cognitive schemas stem from criticism and rejection early in life from parents or teachers, and also from over-expectations during childhood. Research evidence Constance Hammen and Susan Krantz (1976) found that the 33 depressed female undergraduate students in their study were more likely to show distortions in their cognitions than their 34 non-depressed counterparts after being given feedback on a performance task that they had undertaken. This supports the idea that people with depression have distorted thinking that neurotypical people do not demonstrate. A review of 16 meta-analyses conducted by Andrew Butler et al . (2006), considered 9995 participants from 332 individual studies in total. This review found a significant improvement in depressive symptoms in patients who had undergone cognitive therapy. This suggests that if cognitive treatments are effective at reducing depression, the initial cause for depression must have involved faulty cognitions. This therefore provides support for the cognitive explanation of depression. The cognitive area The cognitive area of psychology was represented by four of your core studies. The signature feature of the cognitive perspective is a focus on the processing that goes on inside your head—cognitive psychologists explain behaviour in terms of mental processes such as thinking but also memory, attention, perception, beliefs, expectations, language and so on. Like the cognitive area in general, the cognitive approach to mental illness involves internal, mental processes as the cause of behaviour—and most specifically on faulty mental processing. A depressed person would tend to see the glass as half empty. Negative view of the self Negative view of the world Negative view of the future The cognitive explanation of mental illness Chapter 1: Issues in mental health 36