Critically discuss the claim that childhood adversity causes mental and physical health problems.
  1. The cognitive model is used to conceptualise mental health problems and to guide treatment.
  2. Describe what is meant by the cognitive model.

What is meant by the cognitive model?

First, most of the feelings and emotions including feeling happy, excited, sad, anxious, depressed or distressed is caused by a thought. The thought can be one or more, and thoughts can pull on each other and have a link. Thoughts can be new or developed through time, which can effect an individual positively, neutrally, or negatively.

The cognitive model is a very helpful model used to explain the flow and effect of an individual’s thought. In 1957 an ABC model was developed by Albert Ellis and is still used nowadays to help organizing thoughts and defining reasons and causes. The model includes:

  • Activating event
  • Beliefs/thoughts
  • Consequences: including: Behaviours, Emotions, and Physiology.

The activating event can be as simple as a thought that passes through a person’s mind, or a situation that a person might witness. The activating events can define the triggers of an induvial. The triggers could be seeing something that have a memory, a perfume that is linked with a trauma, a song that used to be played during bad times, and so on. So, it is important to know what are the events that can trigger a response.

Before going to B (beliefs/thoughts), C is more visible to see and feel.

C as consequences, behaviors can be avoidant during an anxious situation, or maybe violent when a child does not get what he/she/they want. Some people develop something called “safety behavior” which they think it helps them through their time of distress, but it actually can cause them bad relapses since they are treating a symptom(an anxious feeling for example) not the cause(the thoughts that leads to anxiety). To illustrate, a person with social anxiety running from a crowd would be a safety behavior, by running away they are only running from this particular situation not solving the problem.

Another consequence is emotions, as a person may feel happy, sad,…etc.

A to C directly would be:

I see a puppy, I am happy! Or I watch a very scary at night, I am terrified.

Then physiology, which include: crying, increased heartbeat and/or breathing, sweating, racing thoughts, disoriented, cold/shivering, and so on. Untreated mental health conditions have can have serious effects on a person’s wellbeing, as a systemic review and a meta-analysis paper in 2016 suggests that, 14.3% of death worldwide or approximately 8 million death each year are attributable to mental disorders. Mental health and physical health are tightly related and both can significantly effect each other.

Now it is B’s turn “where the magic happens!”, Beliefs and thoughts.

The beliefs are the bridge between the activating event and its consequences. The B part requires further thinking to have a complete understanding of a situation, and sometimes it might not be obvious and requires a bit of detective work and reasoning.

Back to the example of: I see a puppy, I feel happy. A and C are given, but the B part needs more work as it can be because I think puppies are very cuddly and I love their warmth, and when I am around them I do not feel lonely. These thoughts of puppies are nice to be around them give the happiness feeling. Furthermore, thoughts first are automatic, then intermediate beliefs and then core believes. To explain, we’ll dig into the possible thoughts of an example of a person seeing someone they know without waving at them, and as a result the person has triggered a depressive or anxious episode.

The automatic thought could be: have I done something wrong? I shouldn’t have left the house, No one notices me, I am invisible.

Intermediate thought could be: If I was prettier maybe they’ll say hi. If I had more money maybe I’ll be more accepted.

Core thought could be: I am unlovable.

 

  1. Explain how the cognitive model accounts for the development of depression.

Following on Aaron Beck’s thought on that thoughts are the cause of depression not the other way around which is a misconception that depression causes negative thoughts.

Depression, is thought pattern of negative thinking that leads to prolonged sense of sadness or/and lack of interest and pleasure.

The cognitive behavioral model explains depression in the belief part.

Also using an example to illustrate: a depressed person with a core belief of no one loves me.

Analyzing the belief part by looking first at the negative automatic thoughts, which can be:

-All or nothing: because this person doesn’t like me, no one does.

-Mind reading: they are quite, they are not comfortable with me or want to communicate with me.

-Jumping to conclusions: they went shopping without me, it means they do not want me in their life.

-Should/must: I treated them nicely, the should do the same and be nice.

-Catastrophizing/magnifying: this person is not treating me well, as everyone in my life!

All of these thoughts are distortions of reality. Followed by schemas that can be explained by “if” and can be Adaptive or Maladaptive. Example would be:

-Adaptive: If I try to focus on loving myself, my self-worth will increase and people will accept me.

-Maladaptive: If people do not accept me, I am going to give up trying to build healthy relationships.

Then going to the core beliefs, the absolute lasting beliefs. They could be about the person itself feeling not good enough, not worth of happiness, not respected, not interesting.

Or the world as it is unfair, dangerous, difficult…etc. Or others as a person may feel that they are not worth their families or partner, not reliable to others, weak in case of breakups and so on.

 

So, the cognitive behavioral model accounts for depression’s development starting from the core beliefs of: I am helpless or/and unlovable or/and worthless, to the intermediate thoughts and schemas that a person may have developed and it could be explained by “if”.

These compose the automatic thought which are mostly negative that leads to a response of sadness or lack of pleasure.

Activating events are triggers of depressive episodes that can increase the sad feelings that may be accompanied by physical reaction which are consequences.

 

  1. Explain how ideas from learning theory and behaviourism have helped inform psychological treatments.

Learning theories includes, Pavlov classical conditioning, where there is condition stimulus and response. Pavlov conditioned a dog to salivate when a bell rings by serving the dog food. The stimulus is the bell ringing when food is served, and the conditioned response is salivating when hearing the bell. Even after the absence of the food, if the bell is ringing, the dog still salivates. Moreover, Little Albert’s experiment was similar as a 11 month child was conditioned to fear a white rat by making loud noise when the rat passes by. The neutral event(seeing a mouse) was paired by a negative event(loud noise) the child developed a phobia; hence, where Phobia can be undersold. Furthermore, that can apply to many irrational phobias where the even itself might not be scary but they are linked or conditioned to something deeper and more terrifying. Triggers are the activating events of the cognitive behavioural model and the learning theories dig deep to find the network behind the irrational or maybe rational link in the B belief section. So, the theory gives a sense of understanding, which is important in cognitive behavioural therapy

Then for behaviourism B. F. Skinner has added to the conditional theory to expand the understanding of the human reaction and behaviour and his theory is called operant conditioning. 4 conditioning types were the outcomes of Skinners experiments:

  • Positive reinforcement
  • Negative reinforcement
  • Positive punishment
  • Negative punishment

Positive is by giving, and negative is removing. So, positive reinforcement would be giving something like food or present to reinforce and encourage a behavior. Also, to encourage a behavior could be by removing something, like if a child studies then their parents will stop being hard on them. Then extinction, were someone is conditioned to something, then after the stimulus goes away for a while, hopefully they can get back to normal. Positive punishment is direct punishment that discourages a behavior. Finally, negative punishment which is removing a punishment. All these theories of behaviorism could help with trying to detect unhelpful ways of thinking and helps fixing them in psychological treatments.

 

References:

Walker, E. R., McGee, R. E., & Druss, B. G. (2015). Mortality in mental disorders and global disease burden implications: a systematic review and meta-analysis. JAMA psychiatry, 72(4), 334–341. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2014.2502

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  1. Our behavior is influenced by multiple factors, both internal and external to us.
    1. Discuss the concept of attachment in childhood and explain how it may affect our behaviour in later life.
    2. Describe the four types of parenting and discuss how these may affect a child’s development.
    3. Explain how our behaviour can be adversely affected by cognitive biases and our use of heuristics.

 

  1. At the heart of Behavioural Science is the use of the scientific method
  2. Critically discuss the claim that childhood adversity causes mental and physical health problems.
  3. Critically discuss the claim that humans are prone to conformity and obedience.
  4. Explain how cognitive behavioural therapy is used to treat social anxiety and critically discuss whether this is an effective treatment.