Theory of Depression

Abert Bandura’s theory is that social cognitive learning theory suggested that people are shaped by the interactions between their behaviors, thoughts, and eviormental events. He also pointed out that depressed people’s self-concepts are different from non-depressed people's self-concepts. Depressed people tend to hold themselves solely responsible for bad things in their lives and are full of self-recrimination and self-blame. In contrast, successes tend to get viewed as having been caused by external factors outside of the depressed person's control. Repeated failure further reduces feelings of self-efficacy and leads to depression.

The main idea in Julian Rotter's social learning theory is that personality represents an interaction of the individual with his or her environment. One cannot speak of a personality, internal to the individual, that is independent of the environment. Neither can one focus on behavior as being an automatic response to an objective set of environmental stimuli. to understand behavior, one must take both the individual and the environment into account. He has four main components to his thory that are Behavior Potential. Behavior potential is the likelihood of engaging in a particular behavior in a specific situation. Expectancy. Expectancy is the subjective probability that a given behavior will lead to a particular outcome, or reinforcer. Psychological Situation. Although the psychological situation does not figure directly into Rotter's formula for predicting behavior, Rotter believes it is always important to keep in mind that different people interpret the same situation differently. Generality versus Specificity. An important dimension of personality theories is the generality versus specificity of its constructs.

Aaron Beck is an American psychiatrist who has pioneered research on psychotherapy, psychopathology, suicide and psychometrics and developed the cognitive therapy. He became interested in psychiatry during an internship at the Rhode Island hospital, where he studied neurology as a specialty. Aaron Beck is considered as the father of cognitive behavioral therapy. According to Beck,"If beliefs do not change, there is no improvement. If beliefs change, symptoms change. Beliefs function as little operational units," which means that one's thoughts and beliefs affect one’ s behavior and subsequent actions. He believed that dysfunctional behavior is caused due to dysfunctional thinking, and that thinking is shaped by our beliefs. Our beliefs decide the course of our actions. Beck was convinced of positive results if patients could be persuaded to think constructively and forsake negative thinking. This is according to buzzle.com.


Martin E. P. "Marty" Seligman is an American psychologist and author of self-help books. His theory of "learned helplessness" is widely respected among scientific psychologists. He is the director of the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Seligman's foundational experiments and theory of "learned helplessness" began at University of Pennsylvania in 1967, as an extension of his interest in depression. Quite by accident, Seligman and colleagues discovered that the conditioning of dogs led to outcomes that were opposite to the predictions of B.F. Skinner's behaviorism, then a leading psychological theory. Seligman developed the theory further, finding learned helplessness to be a psychological condition in which a human being or an animal has learned to act or behave helplessly in a particular situation - usually after experiencing some inability to avoid an adverse situation - even when it actually has the power to change its unpleasant or even harmful circumstance. Seligman saw a similarity with severely depressed patients, and argued that clinical depression and related mental illnesses result in part from a perceived absence of control over the outcome of a situation.

The lobotomy

The lobotomy was one radical chancing therapies developed by Dr. Walter freeman. The frontal lobotomy experiment was proceeded only to people that suffered with mental illness. This was being performed to shut down some emotions. As they were being prepared for the operation they were shocked with electro shocks so they could be unconscious for the time of the operations since there was no anistesia. Dr. Walter Freeman the doctor who starred preforming the operations was not a doctor neither a surgeon he was a neurologist. He performed many lobotomies he was considered the bomb for treating people with these illness. This treatment helped the patient because they entered the operation room with problems like suicidal thoughts manic or depressed problems. But they left the room with less depression and less suicidal thoughts. It may have worked for some patients but for others they had many rebounds a few months later after the operation. It was unethical because Dr. Walter just hammered in a tooth pick through the eyes and just did the operation anywhere. Some of the patients die in the operation; the last one that Dr. Walter did the patient died from a hemorrhage the brain did not stop bleeding. Then he tried to prove the world that lobotomy was effective but he couldn’t. After this he visits many patients that he had performed lobotomy but they were worst. One of his patients was Helen, she was shocked so she could sleep for the operation, placed a towel in her head and then insert a needle threw her eye. The patients were given black sun glasses so they could cover the black eyes till they went away. Dr. Walter Freedman graduated from the University of Pennsylvania from med school. He thought that the shock therapies would work but not as a cure but as only treating a patient so he started preforming the lobotomies. The discovery was in 1936, the patients did not die but they changed after the operation. The change in the patients was sometimes a good change there was no more suicidal thoughts and it removed the depression. The lobotomy was like the new big thing in medical history, it first was opening the brain but afterwards they knew how to do it without the need of opening the scalp the only inserted a toothpick through the eyes to shut down some emotions. Dr, Walter Jackson Freeman was a member of the American Psychiatric Association. He performed nearly 2500 lobotomies in 23 states. This new invention was really not ethical to the community and to the world because of all the deaths and the additional problems that the patients were suffering of a few months after the operation. In conclusion I think that this should not be done and that if it helped some people it really dint because it affecter them and the patient that was the sister of president Kennedy she had a normal life but after the operation she was really not the same person.

Video Response Bipolar

The video we saw in class was really shocking. It showed how a normal boy was detected bipolar desis, and ho with desis cause the death of him. A bipolar person changed moods from low to high, the change is most frequently on kids that on adults. Teen’s that have bipolar their family members are worried that they attempt to take their life’s because they will eventually take a decision of continue taking their pills or not continuing with their pill’s. This video is really shocking how this boy like any other has bipolar. Later he starts thinking about death and that he wants to kill himself at a young age, and this should not be in the mind of a young person, they should be thinking of playing and not thinking about death. He had friends he had a united family and had brothers but he decides to stop suffering. This is common on teen’s to think that they are not useful in this life and that they want to suicide, but as even’s brother said he had this feelings one hundred time’s more that a normal teen. This video was moving because the parents of Evan Perry were the ones who made this video we see the pain that the family has and how they are reacting to this death. We also see that there was a bipolar person in the family that was the brother of Evan’s dad and that he also committed suicide. Bipolar is not an easy desis to have, it also may induce people who have it to drugs or to stop taking their medicine and to many other things.

Internal Assesment "heuristics tversky and kahneman"

Heuristic is enabling a person to discover or learn something for them selves, this is when a person is undergoing pressure and cant really have the pressure and control it. Tversky and Kahenman proposed them selves to judge the situation that the participants were placed in. Also with this pressured placed on them they are preparing themselves for their awnser. But really they need to handle the relevant information needed to make a perfect decision. They both took the easy way preforming a heuristic. In 1973 Tversky and Kahenman had proposed that their hypothesis what that if the participant if placed under pressure a certain event will occur when often based on the number of related instances which can be really recall. In our experiment we will be placing many of the famous people in one column and any random names placed in another column. This will be tested as following the participant will be shown this list and then they will have a certain amount of time to read this list. Later when the time is or they will be handed a sheet a paper and a pencil they will write down as many names they remember. The results of the original experiment were that the most famous names where remembered and the rest of the names were forgotten, this happened because the names remembered where the one’s the participants related to so they remembered them easily but the random names where the least remembered, because the participant does not relate to them as well as they relate with the names of the famous people. Tversky and Kahenman had a conclusion about their experiment and it tell that most of the participants results were optimists meaning the were favorable to their hypothesis of how the participants would relate more to the names they were more related than the names that they were lease related to. Many heuristics have been preformed but they are not as successful as Tversky and Kahenman because they did a minute work planing the names and the participants. The participants were teen and they choose the artists or role models of the teens so they could remember of then and the other names where totally at random. In conclusion this experiment is really interesting how they play with the participants mind to have their hypothesis states as a fact and not as false.

The Placebo Effect - Is it real or just imagined?

According to dictionary. com the placebo effect is a beneficial effect, produced by a placebo drug or treatment, that cannot be attributed to the properties of the placebo itself, and must therefore be due to the patient's belief in that treatment. the experiment that Beeches’ preformed was evaluating 15 clinics trials experimenting different diseases and he found that a 3% of the patients were sactifactory with the placebo effect alone with out any medication. but in modern time the rest of the experiments have shown that more than the 50% have been effective by the participants towards the placebo effect. But it has been proved that some mother n drugs are more effective than the placebo effect. Some important information was that he only recorded the people that were successful with the pelcbo effect and he did not record the people that were not successful in the experiment. Through the placebo effects there has been studies many cases and there is no adequate evidence from studies that this new drug is successful.

There may also be an side effect to this treatment and how the patient reacts to this new drug and how the body also does. This experiment and the treatment may be very riskful because of the factors that apply or affect many treatments also evaluating the treatments may be very difficult. All this factors make my opinion that the placebo effect is really helpful in some situations but in others there might be some complication towards what is happening to the people that are taking the experiment in my opinion many factors are involved to se this effect succeed like the background of this people or the ethics. Like if taking a pill what would be the reaction to the pill if the patient is not taking it or he or she is to taking this procedure seriously, in conclusion i think that this effect does work.

ARE MEMORIES THE SAME?

In the first article it describes that there is a a gender difference and it is favoring to woman. Woman are better at remembering various things like names, objects and every day events. One the other hand men remember things like non linguistic information and a good example that the article says is that the man can remember their way out of the woods, and that women are most likely to least remember the path. The experiment that this actricle performs is showing faces and the participant has to say if it is a male or female face. the results were in that the women could identify the faces more acuertly than the men did. In the second article it describes about cultural differences, it describes that child hood amnesia. We forted what we lived for three and half years but then we can remember most things later on from the three years. The most important is that it depends that where you where raised how long will you remember the memories that had occurred, because a person from New Zealand was asked one of her memories and she said that she remember going to a funeral when she was two and half years old.

Alzheimer’s Disease

The Alzheimer’s Disease is when there is partial or total loss of memory. There is still no cure for this disease but there is a medication that can slower the stages. Alzheimer is most common on older people when your are 65 years old the probabilities get higher. this are some common symptoms of Alzheimer disease.

“Common symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease include:

• Impaired memory and thinking — The person has difficulty remembering things or learning new information. Long-term memory loss occurs when the person can’t remember personal information, such as his or her place of birth or occupation.
• Disorientation and confusion — People with Alzheimer’s disease might get lost when out on their own, and might not be able to remember where they are or how they got there. They also might not recognize previously familiar places and situations.
• Misplacing things — The person forgets where he or she put things used every day, such as glasses, hearing aids, keys, etc. The person also might put things in strange places, such as leaving their glasses in the refrigerator.
• Abstract thinking — People with Alzheimer’s disease might find certain tasks—such as balancing a checkbook—more difficult than usual. For example, they might forget what the numbers mean and what needs to be done with them.
• Trouble performing familiar tasks — The person begins to have difficulty performing daily tasks, such as eating, dressing, and grooming.
• Changes in personality and behavior — The person becomes unusually angry, irritable, restless, or quiet.
• Poor or decreased judgment — The person has difficulty making decisions and cannot grasp consequences.
• Inability to follow directions — The person has difficulty understanding simple commands or directions. The person might get lost easily and begin to wander.
• Problems with language and communication — The person can’t recall words or understand the meaning of common words.
• Impaired visuospatial skills — The person loses spatial abilities (the ability to judge shapes and sizes, and the relation of objects in space), and can’t arrange items in a certain order or recognize shapes.
• Social withdrawal — The person begins to spend more time alone and is less willing to interact with others.
• Loss of motivation or initiative — The person might become very passive and require prompting to become involved.” (http://my.clevelandclinic.org/disorders/Alzheimers_Disease/hic_Symptoms_of_Alzheimers_Disease.aspx)

The video we saw in class showed the different stages that this dieaseas has. the first stage was a woman that was diagnose 2 month’s ago and se ant remember who was the president before Bush, she explains that se meets people and interacts which them but 10 min later she can’t remember their name. Later there is an example of another older woman that she wants to drive but really she cant remember the traffic sign’s, we also see an example of a old man who was a TV presenter and he died because of this ideas, he alusinated that he was in the TV show and we saw how he died.