The cognitive approach to explaining depression: Beck's negative triad and Ellis's ABC model. The cognitive approach to treating depression: cognitive behaviour therapy, including challenging irrational thoughts.

What this dot point is asking

AQA wants you to explain depression using Beck's negative triad and Ellis's ABC model, and describe CBT including challenging irrational thoughts. The exam skill is to keep Beck and Ellis distinct, to apply the ABC model to a scenario, and to describe both the cognitive and behavioural sides of CBT.

Beck's negative triad

Beck argued that depression is caused not by events themselves but by how a person processes them. He identified three components. Negative self-schemas, often formed in childhood through criticism or loss, act as a lens through which the person interprets all information about themselves negatively. Cognitive biases (systematic errors in information processing) then distort thinking, including overgeneralisation (a single failure means total failure) and catastrophising (assuming the worst possible outcome). Together these produce the negative triad: a stream of automatic negative thoughts about the self ("I am worthless"), the world ("everyone is against me") and the future ("things will never get better"). These three negative views reinforce one another in a vicious cycle that maintains the depression.

Ellis's ABC model and CBT

Ellis's account also locates the cause in thinking rather than events. In his ABC model, an Activating event (A) triggers a Belief (B), which may be rational or irrational, and it is the belief, not the event, that produces the emotional Consequence (C). Ellis argued that depression arises from irrational beliefs, especially "musturbatory" thinking, the rigid demand that one must always succeed or be approved of, captured in beliefs such as "I must do well at everything". His therapy, rational emotive behaviour therapy (REBT), extends the model to D and E: the therapist Disputes the irrational beliefs (using logical disputing, "where is the logic in that?", and empirical disputing, "where is the evidence?") to replace them with rational ones, producing a new and healthier Effect (E). Cognitive behaviour therapy more broadly combines this cognitive work, challenging irrational and negative thoughts, with behavioural techniques. Beck's version treats the client as a scientist who tests negative beliefs as hypotheses against evidence. The behavioural side includes behavioural activation, gradually re-engaging the depressed person in enjoyable and rewarding activities they have withdrawn from, plus homework tasks to apply the new thinking. A strength of the approach is the strong evidence that CBT is effective for depression, but a limitation is that it can over-emphasise the individual's thinking and place blame on them, overlooking situational causes such as poverty or abuse.