Development and History
Historically, depression was described in psychodynamic terms as "inverted hostility against the self". By contrast, the BDI was developed in a novel way for its time; by collating patients' verbatim descriptions of their symptoms and using these to structure a scale which could reflect the intensity or severity of a given symptom.
Throughout his work, Beck drew attention to the importance of "negative cognitions": sustained, inaccurate, and often intrusive negative thoughts about the self. In his view, it was the case that these cognitions caused depression, rather than being generated by depression.
Beck developed a triad of negative cognitions about the world, the future, and the self, which play a major role in depression. An example of the triad in action taken from Brown (1995) is the case of a student obtaining poor exam results:
- The student has negative thoughts about the world, so he may come to believe he does not enjoy the class.
- The student has negative thoughts about his future, because he thinks he may not pass the class.
- The student has negative thoughts about his self, as he may feel he does not deserve to be in college.
The development of the BDI reflects that in its structure, with items such as "I have lost all of my interest in other people" to reflect the world, "I feel discouraged about the future" to reflect the future, and "I blame myself for everything bad that happens" to reflect the self. The view of depression as sustained by intrusive negative cognitions has had particular application in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), which aims to challenge and neutralize them through techniques such as cognitive restructuring.
Read more about this topic: Beck Depression Inventory
Famous quotes containing the words development and/or history:
“I hope I may claim in the present work to have made it probable that the laws of arithmetic are analytic judgments and consequently a priori. Arithmetic thus becomes simply a development of logic, and every proposition of arithmetic a law of logic, albeit a derivative one. To apply arithmetic in the physical sciences is to bring logic to bear on observed facts; calculation becomes deduction.”
—Gottlob Frege (1848–1925)
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)