Abnormal Psychology

1) Compare Aaron Beck’s Cognitive theory of depression and learned helplessness and hopelessness.

Both Beck’s theory of depression and learned helplessness both indicate that there is a negative schema that is implemented in the person. This negative schema would be indicative of the person experiencing it as it takes on the belief that they have no control over a specific part of their life.

Beck identifies some cognitive distortions that are manifested by people with depression. One of which is magnification. In the process of magnification, an event that could be a minor one will be believed by the person to be larger than what it really is. There is an exaggeration of the immensity of things involved in that situation. In learned helplessness, the same happens since the person who experiences helplessness would see a negative event for more than what it is. A normal person would easily get over an unpleasant situation. On the other hand, believes that he is helpless could not bring himself up to getting past it because he believes that what he is experiencing is so much worse than what it actually is. The same could be said for people experiencing depression.

Another cognitive distortion is overgeneralization. This also happens for people with learned helplessness. In both cases, people start to believe that they would do a poor job at everything and that nothing would ever go right again because things will always go badly. Being rejected once would be enough for people with the two negative schemas to think that they have no control over their environment and that they will be hurt one way or another.

These two are also common in the way that people who experience it have a harder time experiencing pleasure. Since they are so used to thinking negatively and cling on to the belied that nothing good would happen to them, they would dismiss that they feel happiness or any positive affect.

2) Describe some ways of helping...