Depression has been traditionally viewed as an affective disorder and disordered mood is considered the cardinal symptom, responsible for the patient’s behavioral, cognitive and psychological deficits.
According to Aaron Beck in 1967, the most salient psychological symptom of depression is the profoundly altered thinking or cognition.
Aaron Temkin Beck is an American psychiatrist and a professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania. Beck is the pioneering figure in cognitive therapy, one of the most influential and empirically validated approaches to psychotherapy.
Beck has emphasized the role of distorted information processing in the pathogenesis of depression.
Beck noted that clinically depressed individuals characteristically engage in a negative evaluation of themselves, their environment and the future.
They tend to be constantly preoccupied with these negative thoughts on an almost stereotypic fashion, irrespective of contrary evidence.
Through his research, Beck found the cognitions of depressed persons to be characterized by errors in logic that he called cognitive distortions.
Beck cognitive theory of depression
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