Biological Etiologies of MDD
Evidence for this theory of the biological etiology of Depression includes the fact that some patients taking SSRIs show improvement in their symptoms.
What is the Serotonin Hypothesis?
The process by which some depressed patients, particularly women, think a lot about how they feel and try to understand the reasons they feel the way they do.
What is rumination?
Stressful or traumatic events in youth, including abuse and neglect, that are strongly related to the development and prevalence of a wide range of health problems throughout a person's lifespan.
What are Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)?
The number of new cases diagnosed within a certain period of time within a population.
What is incidence?
In the Biological Approach, many researchers look specifically at MZ and DZ siblings to tease out the genetic and environmental components of Depression.
What are twin studies?
This study found that people who have one or more short versions of the 5-HTT allele demonstrate more symptoms of depression and suicidal ideas in response to stressful life events.
What is Caspi et al?
One reason that correlation does not establish causality is because of this; for example, it is unclear whether errors in thinking causes depression or if having depression causes errors in thinking.
What is bidirectional ambiguity?
Also called the Neurogenesis Theory of Depression, this is a complex theory that looks at the role of the HPA Axis in the development of Depression.
What is the Cortisol Hypothesis?
This theory argues that depression is rooted in a patient's "automatic thoughts," including negative views of the world, negative views of the self, and negative views of the future.
What is Beck's Cognitive Triad?
This researcher's theory argues that cultures create socially acceptable sets of symptoms for mental distress.
Who is Kirmayer?
One of the reasons for an increase in the prevalence of MDD around the world--and especially in places where researchers have never seen Depression before--is this.
What is globalization?
In the Biological Approach to Depression, many researchers use this method, which involves finding the concordance rate to determine the likelihood that a trait is inheritable.
What are family, pedigree, or kinship studies?
This study used 42,161 twins from the Swedish Twin Registry to find the concordance rate of Depression, showing the rate is never 100% (even in identical twins) and that the rate is higher for females than males.
What is Kendler et al?
This is the false belief that because a treatment works, it was a lack of whatever the treatment was that caused the disorder. Aspirin may cure a headache, but obviously we would not assume that it was a lack of aspirin that caused it in the first place.
What is the treatment-etiology fallacy?
The theory that some people may have the right genes for a disorder, but that they may not have been "turned on." These people have the potential to develop the disorder depending on life circumstances, diet, or level of exercise.
What is genetic vulnerability?
This cognitive theory of depression is based on the idea that rumination is a necessary condition for depression.
What is Response Style Theory?
Cross-cultural research that use this approach applies the same diagnostic standards, regardless of culture, and may therefore affect prevalence rates as the symptoms of a disorder may be different in different cultures.
What is an etic approach?
The proportion of a population that has a psychological disorder at a specific point in time.
What is point prevalence?
One ethical concern of biological studies of MDD that include genetic testing is undue harm by causing this, which happens when a person is diagnosed with a disorder and then begins to demonstrate symptoms due to their belief they have the disorder.
What is a self-fulfilling prophecy?
One reason for differences in prevalence rates is that there are different levels of risk factors for different populations. For example, this study identified vulnerability factors that increased the risk of depression for women in urban London.
What is Brown & Harris?
This is an important component that must be taken into account to make sure that biological explanations of depression do not become reductionist, "nature vs. nurture"-type debates.
What is epigenetics?
These are symptoms that result in response to a treat, which then can be mistaken as part of the disorder.
What are iatrogenic affects?
Beck included 6 errors in logic in his cognitive theory of depression; this is one.
What is selective abstraction, magnification, minimization, overgeneralization, personalization, and arbitrary inference? (I will also accept dichotomous thinking.)
When individuals experience psychological distress in the form of physiological symptoms; for example, Kleinman found that many Chinese do not have a "sad mood" when they experience depression, but instead they experience lower back pain.
What is somatization?
The proportion of a population who at some point in their life has ever had a disorder.
What is lifetime prevalence?
This is the research method used by Caspi to study Depression.
What is a correlational study? (I will also accept "natural experiment" if you can argue for why it might be considered such.)
Beck's research on faulty thinking in patients with MDD allowed him to create this fairly successful treatment which focuses on reshaping the schema of the client by pointing out errors in thinking and giving them "homework" that challenges how they think.
The selective revealing or suppression of information by clients when meeting with a doctor, this may also refer to the extent to which different genders and ethnic groups seek psychological help and the types of information that they are willing to disclose to a psychiatrist.
What is reporting bias?
This model claims that depression may be the result of a hereditary predisposition interacting with the environment.
What is the diathesis-stress model?
Beck included three examples of negative schema in his cognitive theory of depression; this is one.
What is ineptness schema, self-blame schema, or negative self-evaluation schema?
Brown & Harris created this, which compares the number of risk factors to the number of protective factors in a population (or for an individual) at risk of developing depression.
What is a vulnerability model of depression?
There are three typical limitations of prevalence rates that we discussed in class; this is one.
What are samples sizes that are not large enough to compensate for error in measurement, self-reported data and even clinical diagnoses that may not be reliable, and the fact that by the time the appropriate data is collected and analyzed, it may already be out of date.
This researcher used a mixture of clinical observations, self-report questionnaires, and laboratory studies on memory bias with his own patients to create his theory of the etiology of depression.
Who is Beck?
This study found that both men and women who ruminate more following the loss of loved ones are more likely to become depressed and suffer longer and more severe depression that those who ruminate less.
What is Nolen-Hoeksema?
In simple linear causality, one thing directly makes another thing happen and the effects end there. But in MDD, it is very common for effects to become the causes of new events, called this.
What is domino causality?