Negative Cognitive Styles and Vulnerability to Depression

This research article “Do Negative Cognitive Styles Confer Vulnerability to Depression?” tries to bring on surface the possible causes of depression in daily life and also suggests some possible measures that could be taken to minimize the level of depression. “According to the cognitive-vulnerability hypothesis of depression, negative cognitive styles confer vulnerability to depression when people confront negative life events (p.128).” In this article the authors have successfully proven how negative cognitive styles have confer vulnerability to clinically significant depressive disorders and have helped to increase suicide rate. Biologists suggest that some people feel depressed because of their abnormal biochemical processes going on in their entire system. On the other hand, the cognitive psychologists suggest that the way people interpret their life events could possibly result in their vulnerability to depression.

Cognitive theories of depression suggest that different individuals responses to stressful life events in different way. They further stated that individuals with negative cognitive styles are more likely to develop hopelessness depression. Similarly, individuals with dysfunctional attitudes are more likely to develop reactive depression when they encounter negative events in life that impact on their cognitive vulnerability.

Several studies have shown that negative cognitive styles have increased people’s vulnerability to depression. One such study is the Temple-Wisconsin Cognitive Vulnerability to Depression (CVD) project in which initially nondepressed college freshmen with no other mental disorders were identified as being at high risk (HR) or low risk (LR) based on the presence or absence of negative cognitive styles (p.129). These freshmen were given followed-up assessments, which include self-report and structured interview of stressful life events, cognition, and psychopathology, for every 6 weeks for 2.5 years and then every 4 months for an additional 3 years. They found that the HR freshmen were more vulnerable to develop a first onset of major depressive disorders than the LR freshmen. Also, the recurrence of depression is more common in HR freshmen than in LR freshmen among those participants with past history of depression. In this way the negative cognitive styles is responsible for both recurrence and first onset of clinically significant depression.

The CVD project also shows that HR freshmen were more likely to develop suicidality than LR freshmen during the follow-up period. They also found out that hopelessness has strongly mediated the association between cognitive vulnerability and the development of suicidality. Only the hopeless participants developed suicidality during the follow-up period.