Psychological Interventions & Therapies of Depression (AQA GCSE Psychology)

The use of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) to treat depression

• Psychological treatments tend to take a cognitive approach i.e. working on the patient’s irrational thinking and cognitive distortions

• Psychological treatments do not use drugs or any invasive methods to treat disorders

• Psychological treatments revolve around talking therapy and targeted tasks/exercises that the patient undergoes with a therapist to guide them or on their own as ‘homework’

• Cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) is the most commonly used psychological treatment for depression

• CBT works on cognitions, for example

  • irrational thoughts and behaviours

  • isolating oneself from others 

• CBT includes the following techniques and procedures in (and outside of) therapy sessions (not all of these techniques will be used per patient):

  • Cognitive restructuring/reframing: this involves turning negative thoughts into positive thoughts

  • Guided discovery: this involves challenging negative thoughts and irrational beliefs

  • Keeping a journal: this involves the recording of thoughts, feelings and actions between sessions

  • Activity scheduling and behaviour activation: this involves acting on decisions instead of putting them off

  • Relaxation and stress reduction techniques: this involves exercises such as muscle relaxation, deep breathing, visualisation

  • Breaking down overwhelming tasks into smaller, more manageable steps

  • Working on the present rather than dwelling on the past

• The CBT therapist aims to get their client to the point where they can be independent and use strategies practised throughout the CBT treatment to help themselves 

• A course of CBT generally takes between 5-20 sessions with the client and therapist meeting every week or fortnight with each session lasting between 30-60 minutes

CBT changes thoughts, feelings and behaviours holistically

Evaluation of psychological interventions & therapies

Strengths

• CBT is holistic as it addresses and deals with the whole person (thoughts, behaviour, lifestyle) rather than focusing on one, simplistic explanation

• CBT can be highly effective in the long term for treating depression and other disorders such as anxiety and OCD (Foroushani et al. 2011)

Weaknesses

• Focusing only on the present may not be appropriate for all people; some may need to revisit what has happened in the past to deal with unresolved trauma

• CBT is expensive and time-consuming which means that it will not be prescribed to everyone who needs it