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Depressogenic cognitive schemas: enduring beliefs or mood state artefacts?
1School of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. g.gladstone@unsw.edu.au
Objective:
The objective of this study was to review findings from a previously posited 'lock and key' hypothesis which challenge a number of assumptions about cognitive theories of depression.
Method:
A review of existing cognitive vulnerability theories is presented. Two recent studies employed to test the lock and key hypothesis are summarized. The hypothesis is reviewed in light of other diathesis-stress models of cognitive vulnerability.
Results:
The identification of a depressed individual's core beliefs or cognitive schemas is a difficult task, with perhaps unresolvable difficulties in disentangling any mood state determinant. Longitudinal assessment of originally euthymic subjects appears the best method to investigate any cognitive risk to depression and the significance of diathesis-stress models.
Conclusions:
Empirical evidence for or against the validity of cognitive vulnerability theories is largely dependent upon the methodologies used to detect cognitive styles, as well as the nature of the subject groups studied.