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Biological Theories Of Depression Essay

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Major depression is a mood disorder that causes to have negative feelings for an extensive time as it could take a few days or even weeks. Those negative feelings include sadness, anger, loss, hopelessness and discouragement. They can interfere individual’s daily activities due to the lack of ambition and energy. Depression can be caused through different symptoms such as family history, stressful events, personality, loneliness, illness and physical changes. This essay will be exploring on similarities and differences between biological and psychological explanations of major depression; specifically looking at genetic factors, neurochemical factors, cognitive theories and behavioural theories.

The biological theories are based on genetic …show more content…
This means that the serotonin levels are the main part in major depression and it is important to keep the levels stable with norepinephrine in order not to have depression or mania. If an individual has low levels of serotonin and norepinephrine, they would be depressed. However, if they have low levels of serotonin and high levels of norepinephrine, they would have a serious mental illness as they may have bipolar disorder.

The psychological theories are focused on cognitive theories and behavioural theories. The cognitive theory is based on Beck’s cognitive theory of depression and it is a hypothesis from Beck’s theory that cognitive symptoms of depression lead to the affective and mood symptoms of depression. The main areas that leads to depressed individuals experience the cognitive symptoms are memory, concentration, physical and psychological actions, speed of thought (reduced brain processing) and decision-making. The theory suggests that when an individual has negative thoughts, this can lead to depression. It is based around the Negative Cognitive Triad which means there are three-part negative schema which …show more content…
The emotional symptoms are the negative feelings (sadness, hopelessness, discouragement), motivational deficits are loss of interest in daily activities meaning that an individual may not be enjoying the activities that they previously enjoyed, behavioural symptoms include an individual being physically inactive as they could be tired due to lack of energy and

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