Cognitive theories of depression. Implications for the investigation of emotional disturbances in childhood and adolescence.

In all important cognitive theories of depression negative patterns of thought or thought processes are seen as being involved in the development and/or signs and symptoms of depressions. Thus Beck (1967, 1976) proceeds on the assumption that individuals with a predisposition to depressive illnesses have, because of earlier experiences, arrived at negative attitudes which, in connection with stress factors, bring about, determine and/or strengthen negative thought processes and depressive signs and symptoms. According to Rehm (1977), depressive people are characterized by a specific, unfavourable self-control style, which, amongst others, goes along with an increased consideration of negative aspects within one's own behaviour and/or within one's self. The attributional models of depression of Abramson, Seligman and Tesdale (1978) and Miller and Norman (1979) that came into being with the further development of Seligman's model of learned helplessness, proceed from the existence of a "depressive attribution style" that is characterized by internal, stable and global attributions for negative events and external, variable and specific attributions for positive events. In the hopelessness theory of depression (a revision of the reformulated helplessness theory by Abramson, Seligman and Teasdale 1978) Abramson, Metalsky and Alloy (1989) assume a (hopelessness) sub-type of depression for which they see the experience of hopelessness (in the sense of their definition) as almost sufficient cause for a coming into being and an unfavourable attribution style simply as a susceptibility factor.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)