Cognitive Approach

The Cognitive Approach in Psychology is all about understanding and explaining internal mental processes such as memory, language and problem solving. However, because this blog space is interested in looking at mental disorders, this approach has made a huge contribution to the internal mental process of memory and how we understand memory loss. Psychologists in the approach have created contrasting theories for memory and forgetting, but each has helped us to gain evidence about how we work as information processors.

Small triggers lead to a massive spiral of negative emotions, as shown in the real example below:
Michelle worked in an office and one day got very upset. She met her boss in the lift and said 'good morning' but her boss did not reply.
This immediately triggered Michelle to think:

• My boss doesn't like me
• No one likes me
• I'm going to lose my job
• My life is hell

These spiralling thoughts were responsible for Michelle plunging into depression, and she didn't even consider that her boss may not of heard her, or that he was pre-occupied with his own thoughts.

Because of the Cognitive Approach she was able to attend Cognitive Behavioural Therpay in order to get rid of the depression.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (C.T.) was developed by Aaron Beck under the philosophy that "It's not things that upset us, its our view of them (Epictetus). Cognitive Therapy works around the idea that our thoughts create our moods and sometimes we evoke unhappiness and in some cases depression because of our negative thoughts. Using this therapy enables us to challenge them negative thoughts and turn them into something positive so we dont spiral out of control.

There are 5 common techniques used in treating Congitive Behavioural Therapy (C.B.T). They are all different methods, that can be applied form person to person.

• Keeping a diary of significant events
• Questioning & testing unhelpful habits or assumptions
• Facing activities previously avoided
• Trying new behaviours
• Relaxation + Distraction techniques

Therapies that can be used in conjunction to C.B.T are other treatments, medications all aimed to stabilise the moods

Other mental disorders aer skizophrenia/ OCD/ Social Phobias/ Anorexia.