Theories of Depression

Albert Bandura:Behaviorism, with its emphasis on experimental methods, focuses on variables we can observe, measure, and manipulate, and avoids whatever is subjective, internal, and unavailable mental. In the experimental method, the standard procedure is to manipulate one variable, and then measure its effects on another. All this boils down to a theory of personality that says that one’s environment causes one’s behavior. Bandura found this a bit too simplistic for the phenomena he was observing aggression in adolescents -- and so decided to add a little something to the formula: He suggested that environment causes behavior, true; but behavior causes environment as well. He labeled this concept reciprocal determinism: The world and a person’s behavior cause each other. Later, he went a step further. He began to look at personality as an interaction among three things: the environment, behavior, and the person’s psychological processes. These psychological processes consist of our ability to entertain images in our minds, and language. At the point where he introduces imagery, in particular, he ceases to be a strict behaviorist, and begins to join the ranks of the cognitivists. In fact, he is often considered a father of the cognitivist movement. Adding imagery and language to the mix allows Bandura to theorize much more effectively than someone like, say, B. F. Skinner, about two things that many people would consider the strong suit of the human species: observational learning and self-regulation.

Julian Rotter:When Rotter developed his social learning theory, the dominant perspective in clinical psychology at the time was Freud's Psychoanalysis, which focused on people's deep-seated instinctual motives as determining behavior. Individuals were seen as being naive to their unconscious impulses, and treatment required long-term analysis of childhood experience. Even learning approaches at the time were dominated by drive theory, which held that people are motivated by physiologically-based impulses that press the individual to satisfy them. In developing social learning theory, Rotter departed from instinct-based Psychoanalysis and drive-based behaviorism. He believed that a psychological theory should have a psychological motivational principle. Rotter chose the empirical law of effect as his motivating factor. The law of effect states that people are motivated to seek out positive stimulation, or reinforcement, and to avoid unpleasant stimulation. Rotter combined behaviorism and the study of personality, without relying on physiological instincts or drives as a motive force.The main idea in Julian Rotter's social learning theory is that personality represents an interaction of the individual with his or her environment. One cannot speak of a personality, internal to the individual, that is independent of the environment. Neither can one focus on behavior as being an automatic response to an objective set of environmental stimuli. Rather, to understand behavior, one must take both the individual and the environment into account. Rotter describes personality as a relatively stable set of potentials for responding to situations in a particular way.

Martin Seligman:Martin Seligman founded the field of positive psychology in 2000, and has devoted his career since then to furthering the study of positive emotion, positive character traits, and positive institutions. It’s a fascinating field of study that had few empirical, scientific measures traditional clinical psychology focusing more on the repair of unhappy states than the propagation and nurturing of happy ones.The theory of learned helplessness was then extended to human behavior, providing a model for explaining depression, a state characterized by a lack of affect and feeling. Depressed people became that way because they learned to be helpless. Depressed people learned that whatever they did, is futile. During the course of their lives, depressed people apparently learned that they have no control.
Learned helplessness explained a lot of things, but then researchers began to find exceptions, of people who did not get depressed, even after many bad life experiences. Seligman discovered that a depressed person thought about the bad event in more pessimistic ways than a nondepressed person. He called this thinking, explanatory style, borrowing ideas from attribution theory.

Aaron Beck:
Cognitive Behavior therapy has been widely used and clinically tested in over 400 trials to be an effective form of psychotherapy. Dr. Aaron Beck has studied cognitive behavior therapy for over 50 years and has opened an institute committed to training professionals and helping patients deal with a wide range of psychological issues including fears, anxiety and depression. Cognitive Behavior therapy has gained a great deal of support from the psychological field and is a hands-on, patient empowering form of therapy that deals with the present emotions and thinking patterns of the patient. In the past the field of psychology was largely interested in the past experiences of a patient as a key to unlocking the future. Dr. Beck's Cognitive Behavior Therapy believes that these keys exist in our now.Cognitive behavior therapy works because each patient has an individualized blue print and goal system that can help them to map their path to healing. It essentially works on the assumption that each person has a different thought process associated with every circumstance in life. For instance, while one person may see a trigger such as a fire truck and react with optimism saying "I hope there is no emergency," another person may immediately panic and take on the mindset of "oh no someone has definitely died or lost their home to a fire." These two different responses put into motion entirely opposite affects on the mental, physical and emotional aspects of the person. What many people fail to realize is that it is these assumptions or perceptions that literally dictate the course of their life. In other words, our reality and our today are created by how we feel and think today.



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