Depression
Psychodynamic psychology also called dynamic psychology is the chronological approach to the study of psychological forces and state of the mind in relation to human characteristics stressing the connection between unconscious and conscious procedures with effects to general mental functioning. Dynamic psychology is directed to the idea that humans life undertakings affects their unconscious and conscious ideologies and motivations which in turn correlate with the feelings, character, and general nature of behaviors. Freud the psychologist suggested that the conscious and unconscious parts of the brain come into conflict with each other, resulting to an observation known as repression. This is the state where one is unaware of the some certain happening in the body that include desires, wishes, and motives which influence one negatively (Nemade et. al, 2007).
Psychologists have developed theories to expound on this phenomenon and how it result to depression. Universally, the theories claims that a person should work hard to during early stages so as to overcome this conflicts of the mind for example gaining trust, affection and having good interpersonal relationship. Depression or mental health is a breakdown to solve these conflicts. Psychoanalysts naturally believe that depression is because of anger changed into self-hatred. For example parents who are persistently demanding, lack warmth, angry each time does wrong, and are driven by self interests create a non-conducive environment for the children. This will in turn make the children lack self-esteem, lonely, confused, angry, and helpless. However, because the child knows that the parents are their seniors and providers so out of fear, passion, and guilt the child represses the negative feelings towards the parents and turns it inwards such that it results to self-anger and blaming him/herself. As at this point the child, will definitely feel hated and a bad impression to the parents (Nemade et. al, 2007).
However, the child to conceal his fears will present a perfect character as a means to compensate his/her failures hence resulting to a situation where the child contemplates between being good and accepted and the other side how he is viewed by the parents resulting to inflated anxiety and depression. The children live in constant fear that no matter how they tried they cannot be good before their parents. Object relation theory states that depression is because of difficulties people encounter in forming representations of mutual relationships. Depression is brought by the continued struggle to maintain emotional call with certain objects (Nemade et. al, 2007).
Behaviorism or learning perspective is a field of philosophical psychology relating to the assumption that all living things carry out activities, which include thinking, performing, and feeling which should be termed as behaviors, and differentiate their characters. The behaviorist developed various theories to explain this and maintained that such acts can be described scientifically without remedy to internal physiological actions or to hypothetical makes like the mind. Behaviorism includes the point that all theories must have observational correlation but which there are no philosophical discrepancies between physically observable like actions and internally observable procedures like thinking, feeling, and desires.
Psychological behaviorism is laid on the belief that the mind cannot be examined, unless in anatomical specimens. The only clear way to study humans or animals is through their behaviors and how they react to the external stimuli. Depression being one of the feelings is a mechanism of adaptation to the human character. In nature when things are going as per our expectations we feel high as encouraging us to continue doing that thing but when our lives turns the other way round we tend to feel that the whole world is against us and we feel depressed. This is the normal way of our consciences telling us there are changes we are supposed to make in our lives. Since all this is from the outward look of behavior, we always feel pain when depressed. The internal state of the mind is constrain to the decision that there is something amiss in our lives and will be portrayed as depression though depression cannot be as physically observed as the normal pain inflicted on external parts of the body.
More often than not there are factors that we must have so that we have a comfortable lives, these factors include good nutrition, sunshine, good relationships, and purpose. Failure or insufficiency to any of these factors will lead to automatic depression or despondent. As if that is not enough, complete removal of these factors leads to a state of despair. The behavioral viewpoint of depression joints the disorders to a lack of positive support in one’s life. The insufficient support leads to decline of development behavior that in the end develops depression. Behaviorist speculates that individuals suffering from depression can come up with strategies to refill the defects of positive support through the help of the family, friends, and therapist. They also argue that the person’s incapability to cope with life stress result to social withdrawal, hence reducing the rate of positive support thus resulting to depression (Hickey, 2009).
Humanism is the essential view and a moral philosophy and social science that mull over humans to be of great importance. It is a view general to a wide range of ethical attitude that connects benefits to human dignity, anxieties, and abilities in relation to rational development. Humanistic psychology approves that humans mind is positively influenced by continuing forces in both their unconscious and in the universe at large, but closely the environment in which they live. In this vision, human mental disorders are caused by a faulty or breakdown procedure, more specific human problems are as a result of immaturity of social variety. Freedom of expression is central in developing individuals’ experiences and commonly known as self-determination (Dombeck, 2006).
Humanistic view is on the self that transform into an individual and his perception of his own experience. It claims that one is free to choose his/her own behavior. Factors concerning self-achievement and wants are conspicuous. The humanistic theory of interpersonal therapy stats that depression come as a result of poor self concept and low self-esteem explaining that it is an outcome of interpersonal procedure collections to develop themselves fully. Humans through their interaction can feel isolated and emotionally unfit to mingle with the peers hence lack confidence and thus weak in all the endeavors, which at the long run make one loose interests in anything and develop depression (Hoag & Deffenbacher, 1986).
Cognitive psychology is the branch of psychology exploring internal functions of the brain. It studies how people think, perceive, talk, remember, learn, and solve [problems. The term cognitive imply all the processes that the sensory input is altered, processed, filtered, elaborated, stored, remembered, and used. It mainly deals with these procedures even if some relevant stimuli are missing. In cognitive view, the theory of depression is that it emerges from defective thinking of individual’s current or future life situations. The theorists suggests that the cognition of depressed persons vary from those with anxiety disorder since those with anxiety disorder believes on uncertainties and fear much about the future while the depressed believes of the depressed are negative factors of past functions incidents and scheme a negative view on the future expectations (Sarason & Sarason, 1989).
Cognitive approach takes the whole phenomenon of mind processing information as a computer, when the input are not correct definitely the output will not be perfect since it based on various assumption of the input. Depression will automatically occur if there is poor linkage between the information being processed and what are the expectations of past and future believes about certain duty, if they are not conforming then one will consider him/herself a failure and thus depression occurs (Gotlib et. al, 1997).
Neuroscience is the act of scientifically studying the brain and the nervous system, which was seen as a biology branch, but is currently an interdisciplinary science collaborating with other fields like psychology, physics, mathematics, and medicines. Neuroscience scope has broadened therefore including different approaches to study the cellular, molecular, psychophysics, cognitive, developmental functional, structural, computational evolutionary, the diseases affecting the nervous system and its treatments (Paradise, 2007).
There is a central factor found by neuroscientist that occurs due to lack of balance in important chemicals in the brain called the neurotransmitters and transmit messages from one cell to another. Therefore, if the process is not working efficiently or correctly a depression named bipolar can be encountered. These transmitters are serotonin, epinephrine, and dopamine and their imbalances lead to depression. Also, there is a believe by scientist that people may be born with genes causing bipolar disorder and is set off by stress, this is referred to as biological stress as it is in the genes of a person naturally it is just that stress makes it active so as it leads to depression. In the brain there is a hormone known as the cortical which is seen as an effect of depression and its level in the body is increased by stress hence dropping of the serotonin and dopamine levels (Davidson, 2002).
Depression in the other hand may be caused by events or situations at times called like divorce, loss of once job or death in a family and with time heal even without treating, although depression may be triggered in a person who has the bipolar genes disorder. Also some are affected by smallest things therefore leading to depressive episodes like unexpected poor grades, talking to someone who is depressed, and others are affected by travelling, noise or even catching cold (Lopez, 2010).
Evolutionary psychology is studying psychological adaptation in humans especially brains structure, behavioral differences in individuals and cognitive mechanism, to the physical and social environmental changes. These changes are evolved, reliably developing species-typical computational and neural architecture of the human mind and brain (Buss, 2008).
Depression is not an artifact so you can live in the modern society though there is no surety if it can be exacerbated by modern society. Actually depression is found in all societies even the hunter-gathering society. There is a difference in how we are living and how we used to live in the past has been used to advise patients because of their health problems. In that; in the past there were rare fats and sugars unlike now so they are asked to avoid them and live like their Paleolithic ancestors, which are pretty hard as there are many sweet fatty foods all around us hence leads to depression. Also depression may be analogous to physical pain and can be alerting to what is wrong and need to fixed and at times a situation where you may needed to withdraw. Depression is complicated therefore making it hard to decide whether to accept, live and learn from or you need intervention to set things right (Buss, 2008).
In some case children come to logger heads with their parents and vice versa, lovers may break-up, and this mostly lead to stress as this problems is complicated and forcing you to analyze critically and that’s by thinking. Although according to Robert Nemeiyer of Memphis University disagree by saying that average explanation of human behavior than individual problems and this evolution may affect the developing therapies. Depression has a conventional wisdom which results from very little serotonin and makes us selective in the drug to be taken. This drug is an inhibitor like Prozac, it helps in preventing free serotonin from neurons that absorb and reuse them, and hence neurotransmitters can linger in the brain (Workman & Reader, 2004).
Behavioral genetics/molecular genetics are actually a field studying and examining the relationship between genetics and environment thus determining animals’ behavior. This may include their day in activities like mating, eating, violence, social attitude, and also their mental abilities.
There is moderate genetic influence both on depression and anxiety as study indicates. The behavior of parent towards a child or a child to the parents is said to be involved in etiology, maintenance, or expressing depression disorder from childhood to adult stage. This is because in these different stages there is growth and influences either from external or internal sources. For exploration of environmental and genetic influence, methods are paramount. There is shared environment; which make family members resemble each other and unshared environment, which constitute of different family members and this is seen as influence to both depression and anxiety (Elley, 1999).
Aspects of our mental life are more beneficial to the quality and purpose of our existence than emotions. They are the cornerstones of our lives, hence giving it value and worthiness. Therefore, it is not shocking that most psychologists use a combination of approaches. In recent past, psychologists have been trying to come up with various theories to explain their findings hence necessitated that they come up with something that is appealing and convincing to the public. To proof their intellectuals, they combine so many of their theories and agreed on some amendments so as to achieve their objectives. In view of propagation of successful exchanges between analysts of different ranks, it is no longer essential to speak of psychology of mind in isolation from the approaches of other areas. Other psychologists have conceived the idea of emotions as a challenge to the mind and certainly in relation to the bodily states, motivation, beliefs, and desires. With the theories of explanations, they have stressed their functions to the demeanor of live (Davidson, 2002).
References
Demetriou, A., Mouyi, A., & Spanoudis, G. (2010). The development of mental processing. New
Jersey. NJ: Wiley publishers.
Gilbert, P. (1992). Depression: the evolution of powerlessness. UK: Lawrence Erlbaum
associates ltd.
Hickey, P. (2009). An alternative perspective on mental disorders. New York: Oxford university
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Nemade, R., Reiss, N., and Dombeck, M. (2007). Psychology of depression- Psychodynamic
theories. New York: Allyn & bacon publishers.
