Depression has long been a mystery to many people who have it. However, we have worked together to try and better explain the true causes of depression. It is a serious problem that effect many cultures and people. Each deal with it in their own unique way, however we will not be stating treatments and ways to cope with depression. Our paper is only focused on the causes so that people may figure out how they became depressed. Those being biological, cognitive, learning and social perspectives. The causes have very specific places within the field of psychology.
- Biological, is as it sounds the genetic reasons behind our behaviors.
- Cognitive is the thought process that leads us to act the way we do.
- Learning is the process the actions we do based on past conditioning.
- Social is are acting with in the social context, by social rules and constructs.
Biological Perspective
To look at the biological perspective of the causes of depression the most logical and obvious way in which to do this is to look into genetics. Seeing as how genetics are what decide whether or not we are male or female, have blue or brown eyes and even if we are going to loose our hair as we age. It only makes sense to look at ones genes to see if they are more or less likely to suffer from depression because of those same genes.
In the text "Psychology: Themes and Variations, Briefer Edition" (Weiten, 2008) it simply state that genetic factors are strongly suggested to influence the likelihood that one will develop a major depression disorder.
In the article "Genetic Factors of Depression and Suicide" (Rainer, 1984) it goes on to state that the amount of evidence to there being a genetic component to major depression illness is growing larger and larger. It also states that a first degree relative of a person with a bipolar disorder is over twenty times as likely to be affected with a bipolar or a unipolar disorder. Now if the relative has a unipolar disorder the likelihood of a relative being affected are ten to fifteen times higher than that of the general public.
In "DNA's Moody Temperament" (Bower, 2005) it states that scientists for the first time have seen what a genetic predisposition looks like using magnetic resonance images of the brain and that these images show that people who have poor control of their neural reactions to stress and threats have inherited a particular short version of a particle gene. What causes the problem is this gene, but having intense serotonin activity, degrades the connection to the brains mood regulation center.
Cognitive Perspective
The cognitive perspective on depression is revolved around how a person thinks or feels about themselfs and the world around them, these irrational ways of thinking are called cognitive distortions. There are many different types of cognitive distortions which play huge roles in depression. One type is called selective abstraction. Selective abstraction is when a person thinks about a sitution but they only pull the bad things from it and think of only the bad outcomes that could happen. They neglect to refer to the positive aspects of the sitution which could create a different and better outcome. Another type is called Overgeneralization. Overgeneralization in this case is when a person takes the outcome of one event and applies it to smilar events in the future. The easiest and most common example for this would be school. In school a student may have a math test which he or she does poorly on, so now this result gets stuck in their head and they begin thinking that they do poorly on all math tests so by the time that the next test comes around they will most likely do poorly again because of what they have made themselfs believe. A third cognitive distortion is called magnification and minimization. This is when a person takes both the good and bad aspects of something they have done but focuses more on the bad and really puts themselfs down about it even if the good outweighs the bad. Last is a type called all-or-nothing thinking. This is most commonly found in people who classify themselfs as perfectionists and is when a person feels that their work is only good when it is perfect or better than the rest. There are many different examples of this one of which could be about an athlete. Say an athelete who has all-or-nothing thinking enters a race out of 500 people and finishes in second place. Normally this type of finish to a person would be tremendous given the odds but to this person it was a complete failure simply because they did not come in first. One more example of this could be about a studen in school who has written a paper for english class but when they recieve their paper back there are marks on it with a few criticisms. Because of this they feel that their paper was horrible even if it was a very good paper and only had a few punctuation errors which may ultimately lead to them thinking that they simply can not pass the class because they can't write a good essay which can become very hurtful and bad for the student if this is how they think.
Learning Perspective
Classical conditioning is the most basic and most powerful learning tool. And it is not outside the box to associate it with depression. We have to first understand that depression is the conditioned response, or effect, leaving the conditioned stimulus to be the perfect image we chase. And from are failure to obtain this we experience “a malady that the mass media tells us nearly everyone will experience.” (“SHRINK”-ing THE MIND, pg 3) We do not need to be taught to feel sadness, the unconditioned response or unlearned effect. . “If you are sad for more than two months after the death of a loved one you are no longer simply bereaved; you qualify for a diagnosis of the serious mental disorder depression.”(“SHRINK”-ing MIND, pg 3) We are so conditioned to have depression after death it is even recognized by doctors as a symptom. People learn to be depressed by how others tell them they should react to a certain situation.
Operant conditioning has two main parts reinforcement and punishment. “Reinforcement occurs when an event following a response increases an organism’s tendency to make that response” (Weiten, pg6) A basic reward system like if you do good in school and you get money for it, you will be more likely to continue to do good. Punishment is the opposite of reinforcement “any action following a behavior that makes that behavior less likely to occur.” (June Foley) This goes back to when you were a kid and let’s say the only way you were given any attention is when you were sad. You would be more likely to be sad later on in life because your action of sadness had been reinforced. “Parental authorativeness was linked, as expected with healthier self functioning.” “Found that parental inconsistency accounted for 51% of the variance in the emotional development of children.”(Tumpeter, Watson, O’Leary, & Washington, pg55) That is huge statistic to tell you that your parents really do have a lot of control over your life. Just by deciding what to reinforce, punish or even the lack of deciding can have adverse affects.
Social Perspective
I am going to focus on the social causes of depression. The article that I chose is called “Depressed? Just Pop the Prozac” by Caroline Daniel. The article looks into the use of drugs for helping mental depression and life events has being the cause of depression.Caroline Daniel states in this article that “nasty life events “cause” depression.” Professor George Brown, a sociologist has evidence to back this statement up. He writes “I believe that the bulk of depressive disorder is at the heart the result of a failure to meet goals derived from evolutionary-based needs such as being admired, forming friendships, having a core adult attachment, having children and so on. These goals are almost entirely social in nature and in this sense rates of depression are likely to be largely the result of social processes.” His evidence states that one in five of us will have severe depression of clinical severity. One in three of those having low self esteem before the life event that caused the depression and around 90 percent is triggered by the life event. I too believe that major life events cause depression. People every day become depressed when something in their life has dramatically changed for the worse. It is just a normal reaction. If someone that you have a relationship with of any form dies you are going to become depressed. But you have to cope with it. Coping is how we deal with the stress. Other thing cause depression other than death, some of the major ones are peers and family. Peers can cause depression because if a person is not accepted by their peers they feel that they are inadequate. If peers keep not accepting them it can cause them to have low self-esteem. Low self-esteem is bad because once a person has it is almost impossible to get rid of and hurts them in their everyday life. A family is a big cause of depression. If your family is not supportive of you or they are always fighting it is hard for a person to be happy. People need their family to be there for them. A family is supposed to be like a net they are supposed to catch you when you are feeling bad. If they do not do anything to help you out you will just keep being depressed. In order to not become depressed so much you must try not to have too much stress in your life. You need good social support, which are various types of aid and comfort provided by members of one’s social network. This basically means that you need to surround yourself with people that you know are good people and that will pick you up when you are down and are very optimistic. Optimism is a key thing in depression management. If you are optimistic good outcome have a way of finding you.
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