Hopelessness theory of depression, Abramson, et al, (1978 ...



Hopelessness theory of depression, Abramson, et al, (1978, 1989)

A Cognitive Approach to depression

Abramson et al (1978) redeveloped learnt helplessness theory by taking into account cognitive aspects of depression which had previously been ignored. The theory identifies attributional biases, (ways of accounting for our successes and failures) which underpin the sense of hopelessness which is commonly described by depressed patients and is associated with suicide.

Failures can be attributed to causes which are:

1. Internal (personal) or external (environmental)

2. Stable (always so) or unstable (just on this occasion)

3. Global (all encompassing) or specific (only applies to one situation)

Those with ‘depressive attributional style’ attribute failure to internal, stable and global causes; they feel personally responsible, that things will never change and that everything they come into contact with will be blighted in the same way; this leads to negative expectations and symptoms of depression

Evaluation

( Hopelessness is an abstract concept but has been measured by Beck et al (1974) in a reliable manner using Beck’s ‘Hopelessness Scale’.

( Seligman (1979) has also developed an “Attributional Style Questionnaire” (ASQ) which provides an assessment of each of the three factors of attributional style (internality, stability and globality).

( Students who received poor exam results and felt depressed completed the ASQ and those who showed non-DAS had recovered within two days whilst those with DAS still felt depressed. This study demonstrates the predictive validity of this questionnaire, as it can reliably predict how long students will take to recover.

( How can Seligman’s sample be criticized? Why is this a problem?

( Why should Seligman have followed these students for longer than 2 days?

( Abramson and Seligman have little to say about where hopelessness comes from,– in fact it may be a consequence of depression and not a cause; however Rose et al (1994) have linked DAS with sexual abuse, over-protective parenting, harsh discipline and perfectionist standards

Write a short commentary on Attributional Theory including the following themes (you are likely to compare AT with LHT)

• Focus on cognitive aspects of depression

• Large body of research in social psychology to support attribution theory in general

• Specific research on depressive attributional style

• The concepts of DAS and hopelessness have stimulated great interest in depression and research

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