Culture & Environment
Outline Brown and Harris's vulnerability model of Depression
1. vulnerability factors - factors make individuals more susceptible to depression.
2. protective factors - factors lower the likelihood of depression
3. provoking agents - stressful life events that act as triggers for depression and their power is influenced by the other two factors
Describe is the role of serotonin and how does it connect to depression?
Serotonin is a neurotransmitter responsible for mood regulation.
It can be argued that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain.
Neme of the cognitive model for depression we reviewed and what it stands for.
Ellis's ABC model.
A - activating event
B - belief
C - consequence
What are the three main stages of social learning theory? (in order)
1. Learner OBSERVES behaviour of a model
2. Learner observes if the model is REINFORCED (rewarded) for their behaviour
3. Observer IMITATES behaviour
What is a dose-response relationship? Explain this in context of ACE and health problems.
Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) have a dose-response relationship with many health problems.
Persons who had experienced four or more categories of ACE, compared to those who had experienced none, had a 1.5-fold risk for severe obesity (BMI ≥ 35 kg/m2) in adulthood.
List THREE cultural factors which could affect MDD prevalence.
diet, substance use, income, racism (stigma), access to shared cultural group identity, access to cultural knowledge.
Describe the findings from Caspi's study
Which model do the findings support?
People with two short alleles on the 5-HTT gene are the most likely to suffer from depressive symptoms when they suffer stressful life events.
The Diathesis-Stress model
What were the findings of Ziegler and Leslie's (2003) study.
Positive correlation between irrational beliefs and frequency of everyday hassles.
Supports the idea that irrational beliefs have consequences; not that it leads to MDD.
FYI - the study measured irrational thinking using the Survey of Personal Beliefs, and how hassled they believed their lives were using the Hassles Scale.
1. Attention (notice and focus on modelled behaviour)
2. Retention (store and remember the observed behaviour)
3. Reproduction (skills and opportunity)
4. Motivation (reason/incentive)
Describe the findings of Jackson and Steptoe's study
individuals with obesity had higher hair cortisol concentrations compared to those without obesity
Describe the Diathesis-Stress Model
According to this model, also known as the ‘vulnerability-stress model’, two factors are needed to develop a disorder like depression:
a) stress (environmental factors)
b) a vulnerability factor (the diathesis e.g., a genetic inheretence/predisposition).
Having one or the other won’t matter, but when the two are combined, problems arise.
Explain what polymorphism means (in relation to this topic)
polymorphism refers to 'multiple forms'.
The 5HTT gene has TWO variants (short and long allele)
Describe a situation where you are applying the ABC model.
Make clear which behaviour correlates to each step.
There should be a behavioural and emotional consequence.
Activating event (e.g., stumbling over words)
Belief (irrational - e.g., I am terrible at public speaking, everyone is laughing at me)
Consequence (e.g., feels ashamed/anxious (emotional) and avoids speaking in class (behvioural))
Describe the findings from Lowe et al study (Food Dudes)
The researchers found a significant increase in fruit and vegetable consumption both at school and at home among children in the experimental condition.
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(evidence of retention) - Four months later, they were still eating twelve times as much fruit as they had originally, and four times the quantity of vegetables.
Explain how higher stress can be a risk factor for obesity
Stress activates sympathetic nervous system (fight-flight)
Increase in cortisol (stress hormone)
Cortisol influences appetite, fat storage and metabolism. When cortisol remains elevated due to chronic stress, it can increase cravings for high-calorie surgery and fatty foods, whilst also promoting the storage of visceral fat around the abdomen.
This type of fat is harmful as it is linked to insulin resistance, inflammation and higher risk of metabolic diseases, making prolonged cortisol elevation a significant factor in stress-related weight gain and obesity.
Describe the research method and at least one of the findings of Brown and Harris's study regarding the vulnerability model of depression
Method - semi-structured interviews, 458 women in South London were asked about their daily lives and depressive episodes.
Results - Working-class mothers were 4x more likely to get depressed than middle-class mothers.
Protective factors (e.g., martial intimacy) reduced the risk of depression by boosting self-esteem and providing sources of meaning (e.g., close marital intimacy).
Vulnerability factors (e.g., maternal loss, no confiding relationship, unemployment) increase depression risk when combined with provoking agents—stressful life events that trigger grief and hopelessness, especially in women lacking social support.
What is the gene correlated with depression?
How can it lead to an increased risk of depression?
5-HTT gene - this is the serotonin transporter gene. It affects behaviour through gene expression.
The gene is responsible for producing the serotonin transporter protein (SERT). The SERT protein regulates the reuptake of serotonin in the brain.
Short variant (S allele) of the gene are more at-risk of developing depression because it produces less SERT, resulting in less efficient reuptake process = more serotonin in synapse. This dysregulation of the system impacts effective mood regulation (symptom of depression).
simplifies a complex process
breaks a process into simpler smaller steps
allows us to make predictions about behaviour
can be tested through experiments - can make hypothesis (predict bheaviour)
has constructs that can be measured in experiments.
Describe a scenario which applies SLT stages and mediational processes.
For example: X's grew up observing drug use within his family and social environment. As a child, he saw his father misuse alcohol and his older brother use cocaine, meaning these behaviours were modelled by significant figures in his life.
Jake likely paid attention to his brother’s behaviour at parties and retained the idea that drug use was normal. When he saw his brother being admired by friends, this acted as vicarious reinforcement, making drug use appear socially rewarding. As Jake became a teenager, he reproduced the behaviour by experimenting with drugs himself. Because drug use was normalised in his family and peer group, he was motivated to continue using drugs, eventually leading to dependency.
Explain how stress does not directly cause health problems. How is obesity a result of 'domino causality'
Stress is the first domino. Creates chain of events leading to obesity.
It raises cortisol levels, which can affect appetite, cravings, and the brain’s reward system.
This leads to behaviors like emotional eating or experimenting with substances, which then provide short-term relief.
Over time, those behaviors repeat, turning into patterns like overeating or substance use. Eventually, obesity or addiction.
The health problem isn’t caused by stress alone, but by the entire chain of biological and behavioral reactions that stress sets into motion.
Using Hofstede's cultural dimensions of individualism and collectivism, explain cultural differences in approaches to mental health.
E.g., between differences between Aboriginal Indigenous Australians and a Western approach
The Indigenous approach to mental health in Australia is collectivist and holistic, viewing well-being as connected to community, culture, and land. It emphasises relationships, spiritual health, and cultural identity. Healing involves community support, storytelling, traditional practices, and strengthening connections to Indigenous knowledge and land.
Western approach to mental health is individualistic, focusing on personal responsibility and biomedical treatments. It emphasises diagnosis, medication, and therapy to address mental illness at an individual level. Psychological well-being is often seen as separate from social and cultural factors, with treatment prioritising self-improvement, cognitive restructuring, and behavioural change rather than community or spiritual connections
Explain why there are often issues with the concept of measurement in research studies about depression.
Much of the research has to do with whether individuals develop depressive symptoms. This is not the same as a diagnosis of clinical depression, where both the extent and duration of the symptoms are important.
We often can only rely on self-report measures (subject to demand characteristics) or only measure observable behaviors in animals, not cognitive factors such as low self-esteem, feelings of sadness, or pessimism.
Research conducted is quasi-experimental—the participants cannot be randomly allocated to depressed and non-depressed conditions. It is not possible to accurately measure the level of serotonin in the brain under “natural conditions.”
Critique Ellis's Model through the lens of causality.
Why is it limited in regards to making a causal claim?
•A weakness of the ABC model is that it does not establish clear causality between irrational beliefs and depression.
•Although Ellis argues that beliefs (B) cause emotional consequences (C), it is possible that depression itself leads to more irrational thinking, rather than the beliefs causing the depression.
•This means the relationship may be bidirectional, making it difficult to conclude that irrational beliefs are the primary cause of depression.
•As a result, the explanatory power of the model is limited
When researching this topic, how is BIAS an issue?
It is difficult to measure peer influence, media exposure, parental modeling. Often data is influenced by recall bias, or it may be subject to social desirability bias.
https://thinkib.net/psychology/page/64848/obesity-slt-and-obesity
Describe the findings from Evan et al's study on stress, self-regulation and obesity.
The researchers concluded that early life stress can predict greater weight gain during adolescence, even when children appear to have strong self-control in certain situations.
They suggested that the connection between stress, self-regulation, and weight gain is a complex one. Stress may interfere with children’s ability to regulate their eating habits in everyday life,