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.