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.



Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/4031176

Lobotomy

It consists of cutting the connections to and from the prefrontal cortex, the anterior part of the frontal lobes of the brain. There are nerves that connect the frontal lobes to the rest of the brain. The idea behind psychosurgery, later proven to be invalid, was that these nerves were somehow malformed or damaged, and if they were severed they might regenerate into new, healthy connections. Contrary to popular conception, the operation was not used only on psychiatric patients. Many people were lobotomized for intractable pain, such as chronic, severe backaches or agonizing headaches. The three common versions of psychosurgery were prefrontal leucotomy, prefrontal lobotomy, and trans orbital lobotomy. This is a really hard thing to do because has many ways to see it for example you can die during the operation but it also can cure you in a certain way because you will be all with no emotions and you will not have that normal emotions that everyone has and needs to figure it out how to deal with them. This for me has not been an intelligent cirgury because it is too risky to do. A lobotomy also utilized drilled holes, but in the upper forehead instead of the top of the skull. It was also different in that the surgeon used a blade to cut the brain instead of a leucotome. The infamous trans orbital lobotomy was a blind operation in that the surgeon did not know for certain if he had severed the nerves or not. A sharp, ice-pick like object would be inserted through the eye socket between the upper lid and eye. When the doctor thought he was at about the right spot, he would hit the end of the instrument with a hammer. This was because it was considered unprofessional to criticize another physician in public, so many doctors who knew that psychosurgery was a farce did not make their opinions known. This operation did not satisfy Freeman. He knew that an immense contribution to medicine would be a cheap, quick, and effective treatment for mental illness and pain. To this end he developed the trans orbital lobotomy, at first using an actual dime-store ice pick and a rubber mallet. Again, the problem of breakage occurred. Freeman persevered and was soon performing the brain operation for every complaint imaginable and anywhere he happened to be, even in his own office. Watts was not happy with this state of affairs, telling Freeman that he must “stop doing brain surgery as an office procedure” or Watts would sever their partnership, which is what he eventually did.
http://www.psychosurgery.org/about-lobotomy/

Bipolar disorder

Bipolar is a very harsh disorder because it has various ways that make his/her life difficult, in bipolar disorder affect men and women equally specially in the ages of 15 threw 25. To diagnose bipolar you have to do first is ask your family medical history, particularly whether anyone has or had bipolar disorder. Second, observe your behavior and mood. Last, ask about your recent mood swings and for how long you've experienced them. There are three types of bipolar Type 1 being the harshest is mania and depression, Type 2 hypomania and Type 3 cyclomania. Some symptoms of bipolar are: Agitation or irritation, Inflated self esteem, Little need for sleep, Noticeably elevated mood, Poor temper control, Lack of self control, Hyperactivity, Tendency to be easily distracted, Suicidal thoughts. Some ways to treat it are: 1)Lithium- mood stabilizer, 2)Antidepressant, 3)Electroconvulsive therapy- when bipolar disorder that does not respond to medication. Evan Perry was very difficult to understand because the video we saw mostly he was very happy he obtained good grades, and he interacted well with society. The only problem is that he could not control himself without his medication and that made him commit a horrible mistake to his life.

Cultural and Gender

In the gender sex difference the probability of genetically based differences between the quality of male and female memory remains unknown, the results suggest that females currently hold the advantage in episodic memory. That is because in future experiments women have a better developed sense that give them advantages from men."Dreams are private, so the only way someone else would know about it is if you talked to them about it," he says, "so it's an interesting test of the social interaction model." The researchers found that, as they had hypothesized, Caucasians' average age for their first remembered dream was almost one year younger than that of Asians--5.6 years old compared with 6.4 years."

http://www.apa.org/monitor/sep05/culture.aspx
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080220104244.htm

Article #3

Some researchers at the University of California, Davis, called Weiwei Zhang, a postdoctoral scholar, and Steve Luck, a professor of psychology, both at the UC Davis Center for Mind and Brain. The test consisted of the accuracy of a short-term memory and the probability that the memory still existed. The experiment concluded that “either had the memory or didn’t have the memory,” Luck said, “and the probability of having it decreased between four and ten seconds. The memories did not gradually fade away.” This may happen in real life because the short term memory happens very often now in days because there are people having a very short term memory.



http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090429091806.htm

Article #2

Authors were Stefano Puntoni, Bart de Langhe, and Stijn van Osselaer, in the experiment what the authors did was tested different slogans with participants and found differences in how the messages were perceived. The three men thought that the effect was not due to the differences of language or maybe the participants difficulty in understanding copy written in foreign languages. "We find that the emotional advantage of consumers' native language depends on personal memories and the language context in which those memories were generated". The researchers found that the effect happens more in women than in men. They believe that women have a stronger memory for emotional events than men. This can happen in real life because sometimes you cant comunicate with other people because or they cant speak your same language or they cant speak at all, so you try to use common signs to comunicate with them.



http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081215111433.htm

Placebo Effect

The placebo effect is "the measurable, observable, or felt improvement in health or behavior not attributable to a medication or invasive treatment that has been administered". The H.K study is very effectiveness like the first article said " studies have shown that placebos are effective in 50 or 60 percent of subjects with certain conditions,"pain, depression, some heart ailments, gastric ulcers and other stomach complaints." And, as effective as the new psychotropic drugs seem to be in the treatment of various brain disorders, some researchers maintain that there is not adequate evidence from studies to prove that the new drugs are more effective than placebos". This shows us how people can be fooled easily, because someone comes and tells you this can cure your problem than you are really thinking positive of that cure adn you make your mind believe its true. Problems that these studies may have, are not a lot because placebo effect is just to prove that people can be tricked very easily and how sometimes illness isnt cured just by medical things. Placebos for me is very effective because its cheapier than all those medications people waste a lot of money in artifacts that sometimes cure you or maybe not. But to take the risk it is whole lot better placebos.