How Has Cognitive Psychology Helped Us to Develop New Treatments for Depression and Anxiety?


Depression is the condition where a person has a feeling of discouragement, hopelessness, sadness, disinterest in life and generally unmotivated. Anxiety is different from depression and has the following symptoms: sleeping problems, irritability, nervousness and difficulties in concentrating. Both depression and anxiety affect the way a person feels, thinks, behave as well as function. Depression and anxiety has become a serious problem in the 21st century and it is estimated that 3 to 5% of people suffer from depression at any point. It is therefore necessary to have treatment for depression and anxiety that it is fast. Management of the same is also equally important.

It is in line with the above that the need for development of new treatment methods for depression and anxiety arose. Cognitive psychology is one of the methods that have come up for this purpose. Cognitive psychology is the science of the mind. This is the study of how people think as well as the study of the processes that underlie their mental events. To understand and treat a person suffering from depression and anxiety, there is need for understanding the mind and the processes that take place in the mind. From the cognitive perspective, it is important to understand that in order to know the things that make a person tick, it would be necessary to find out the processes that go on in their mind. The process of thinking needs to be looked at keenly and carefully so as to be able to understand what goes on in the mind of those who are depresses or anxious. How knowledge is acquired, information processed and treated and the responses thereof are things that the psychologists are keen on. This is because there are variables that have influence between a given stimuli and the response. A deep understanding of this would help in the intervention necessary for the treatment of both depression and anxiety.

Depression and anxiety results from a situation where there is a negative response to stimuli. The mental processes taking place play a big role in such a situation. Treatment of this would therefore be as a result of the direct influential impact on the mental processes. The study of mental processes would enable psychologists to know exactly how to affect these processes in order to have the desired effect. When this is done, depression and anxiety would be treated.