The claim cognitive theory makes

1. Cognitive theory explains unipolar depression through the way a person thinks, and in particular through habits of interpretation that make experience look worse than it is.
2. It stands opposite the genetic explanation, because it places the cause in mental processes rather than in inherited biology.

Negative schemas

1. A schema is a mental framework built from past experience that you use to make sense of a new situation quickly.
2. A negative schema is one set to expect failure, rejection and loss, so an ambiguous event gets read in the gloomiest available way.
   1. A neutral message from a friend saying they cannot meet becomes evidence that nobody wants your company.
3. Because the schema filters what you notice, successes get dismissed as luck while failures get stored as proof, so the framework keeps confirming itself.

Beck's cognitive triad

1. Aaron Beck built the best known version of this explanation, and his cognitive model of depression turns on one central pattern of belief.
2. A negative schema shows itself in three linked beliefs, and Beck called that grouping the cognitive triad.
3. The negative view of the self is the belief that you are worthless or not good enough.
4. The negative view of the world is the belief that other people and your circumstances demand more than you can ever give.
5. The negative view of the future is the belief that nothing will improve and that effort is pointless.
   1. The three feed each other, because a hopeless view of the future makes it harder to act, and not acting then supplies fresh evidence for the negative view of the self.

Ellis and irrational beliefs

1. Albert Ellis built a second version of the cognitive explanation, and he puts the cause in irrational beliefs rather than in a set of negative views.
2. An irrational belief is a rigid demand about how life has to go, such as I must never fail or everyone has to approve of me.
3. Ellis argued that an event does not lower mood directly, because the belief sitting between the event and the reaction decides how hard it lands.
   1. That sequence is easy to hold on to as the activating event, then the belief, then the consequence, which is sometimes shortened to ABC.
   2. Two people can be turned down for the same job, and the one holding the belief that they must be chosen every time is the one left feeling worthless.
4. Because the belief is doing the damage, treatment built on Ellis works by disputing that belief and putting a flexible preference in its place.

Strengths of the explanation

1. It handles individual differences well, because it shows why one person shakes off a setback while another is pulled into lasting low mood by the very same event.
2. It has clear practical value, because if faulty thinking maintains depression then challenging that thinking should relieve it, which is exactly what cognitive behavioural therapy sets out to do.

Weaknesses of the explanation

1. The direction of cause is unclear, because negative thinking may be a symptom of being depressed rather than the thing that produced it.
2. It leaves out the biological side, and Caspi et al. (2003) found that people carrying a short allele of the 5-HTTLPR gene were more strongly affected by stressful life events, which a purely cognitive account cannot accommodate.

Turning this into marks

1. This is set on depression only, so material about addiction earns nothing here however accurate it may be.
2. Naming the cognitive triad earns further marks only if you say what each of the three beliefs actually is.
3. The mark most often lost is describing schemas and beliefs without tying them to the person in the scenario.