Beck's Theory Of Depression

Depression is one of the most prevalent psychiatric disorders widely found and one of the most to be frequently diagnosed. As depression increases, multiple approaches to treatment have been sought after to effectively treat the disorder. Many of the psychological studies have shown individual and biomedical therapy to be efficient treatments to help depressive people. Some psychological views believe that the disorders are caused by biological factors and some adopt the approach the cause to be in the mind. In discussing the effects of cognitive therapy and or antidepressants medication to treat depression, findings have showed how they are similar in neural mechanism and how they are distinct from each other. Individual therapies are one …show more content…
A symptom of depression is distorted thinking where negative self-schemas bias a person’s thinking. Psychologists have been led to believe that by replacing one’s negative cognitive process with more realistic and positive ones, they will be able to help people with depression – this is based on Becks theory of cognitive restructuring. In researching this theory, the Riggs et al. (2007) were able to study the effectiveness of the cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) in combination with a placebo or an SSRI. This was a randomized double blind study that used 126 adolescents from ages 13-19 that have suffered from depression along with substance use disorder and conduct disorder. Physicians rated the participants by “very much improved” or “much improved” after four months. The physicians found that 67 percent of the patients in the CBT and placebo group improved and 76 percent of the patients in the SSRI drug and CBT group improved. This study has shown that using cognitive behavioral therapy is an effective treatment because the participant’s …show more content…
Compared to biomedical therapy, individual therapy is cost effective because they’re not usually involved in prolonged treatment. As shown in the Riggs et al. (2007) study, cognitive therapy is quite an effective form of treatment and has no negative effects. On the other hand, the biomedical approach towards treatment has some ethical issues because the drugs may develop side effects. In this case, the use of Prozac in the Kirsch and Sapirstein (1998) study has potential side effects such as headaches, nervousness, loss of appetite, difficulty sleeping and sexual dysfunction. This can be considered as putting harm on the participants or clients, and violates the ethical standards. Although each type of treatment, whether it was cognitive therapy or biomedical therapy, has shown in both study (Riggs et al. and Kirsch and Sapirstein) that the treatment helped alleviate depressive symptoms, they each differ in the amount of effectiveness towards treating depression. Individual therapy relieves depressive symptoms through resolving problems and help clients to develop coping strategies. This helps the clients to change underlying schemas and thereby prevents relapse. Compared to individual therapy that may serve as a long term treatment, drug therapy is an effective way to treat depression in the short term because clients need to continue using the drug