📝Main Concept: Beck's Cognitive Theory of Depression posits that cognitive factors, namely thoughts and beliefs, are the primary causes of depressive behaviour.

Imagine your mind as a busy train station, where thoughts come and go like trains. Some trains (thoughts) you notice, while others are simply passing by in the background. Beck calls these unnoticed thoughts "automatic thoughts" and he thinks they're really important for understanding depression.

For example, imagine you just spilled coffee on your notes before a big test. An automatic thought might be: "Ugh, I can't do anything right. I'm such a mess!" These thoughts may seem small, but they're often negative and can impact your mood and behaviour significantly. Beck believes that these automatic thoughts can be the cause of depression if they're consistently negative.

🌍 Real-World Example: Have you ever had a bad day where everything seemed to go wrong, from waking up late to forgetting your homework at home? Your automatic thoughts might have been overly negative, like "I'm a failure" or "Nothing ever goes right for me". This is similar to the negative thought patterns that Beck believes can lead to depression.

• The Cognitive Triad - This involves negative views about:

  • Yourself (e.g., "I'm worthless")
  • The world (e.g., "People don't take me seriously")
  • The future (e.g., "Things can only get worse")

• Negative Self-Schemata - These are negative views about oneself that can be a result of traumatic experiences in childhood, like abuse or bullying.

• Faulty Thinking Patterns - People with depression often interpret their experiences through a distorted lens, leading to:

  • Arbitrary inference (jumping to conclusions with insufficient evidence)
  • Selective abstraction (only noticing the negative aspects)
  • Overgeneralization (thinking one bad event means everything is bad)
  • Personalization (blaming oneself for everything)
  • Dichotomous thinking (thinking in black-and-white terms, e.g., "I'm either a success or a total failure")

🌍 Real-World Example: Imagine you're on a soccer team and you miss a goal during a big game. If you're thinking in a faulty way, you might think: "I'm a total failure" (dichotomous thinking), "I always mess up" (overgeneralization), and "I ruined the game for everyone" (personalization).