Negative Cognitive Vulnerability

Words: 895
Pages: 4

In the article, “Do Negative Cognitive Styles Confer Vulnerability to Depression”, the authors discuss how living a negative lifestyle affects a person's emotional state. Negative cognitive styles confer vulnerability to depressive disorders, suicidality, and the development of antecedents of cognitive vulnerability to depression. The cognitive vulnerability hypothesis of depression states that negative cognitive styles confer vulnerability to depression when people face negative events in their life. Not everyone is susceptible to depression there are certain types of people who are most vulnerable to depression. According to the biological theories of depression, those who are most vulnerable to depression have abnormal genetic or biochemical …show more content…
They believe that the occurrence of negative events means they are flawed or worthless, their beliefs are irrational. People who do not experience these cognitive styles are said to develop episodes of depression, a subtype known as hopelessness depression. Those who have hopelessness depression experience stressful events. People who believe that their worth depends on being perfect or on the approval of others are said to develop depression. This type of depression is a reactive depression that is triggered by stressors. The stressors are produced when the individual faces negativity that impacts their cognitive vulnerability, (Beck's Theory 1987). Cognition describes a person's way of thinking, perceiving, and remembering. Cognitive styles are ways in which a person processes and perceives information. Temple-Wisconsin Cognitive Vulnerability to Depression Project, (Alloy et al.,1999), was a study done to see if cognitive styles increase a person's risk for depression. The study was done on non-depressed college freshmen with no mental disorders. They were recognised as being at high risk or low risk for depression based on negative cognitive …show more content…
The experimenters found that the high-risk participants parents had a history of depression and the low-risk participants parents did not have a history of depression. This finding could have been due to genetics or from the participants learning negative cognitive styles from the parents. There are multiple issues that can contribute to depression on the participants from the parents. Maltreatment and emotional abuse are contributors to cognitive vulnerability because the one who commits the act of abuse supplies negative cognitions to the child. A vulnerability factor for a disorder does not need to show trait-like stability, it may show short term or long term change. An individual's susceptibility to a host of disease, minor or major is in part of the function of the immune system. The integrity of the immune system can change over time. Acute stress can cause short-term change in the way the immune system functions and chronic stress can produce long-term changes to