The Evolution of Treatments for Depression

About the lecture

In this lecture, we think about the evolution of treatments for depression, focusing in particular on: (i) understanding biopsychology to be the study of how our brain informs and produces our behaviour; (ii) recognising the role of the dopamine system in experiences of depression; (iii) the informing of the drug industry through biopsychological research, to produce antidepressants which target the dopamine system specifically; (iv) Aaron Beck’s research into the cognitive explanations for depression; (v) Beck’s concept of systematic errors of logic, which can contribute to a tendency to suffer from depression; (vi) Beck’s development of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) as a treatment for depression through tackling ‘faulty thinking’; (vii) a key part of CBT being to increase focus on positive life events and decrease focus on negative ones; (viii) findings after the development of CBT that its combination with drug therapy greatly increased their effectiveness and reduced the likelihood of relapse into depression; (ix) recent research that has found that patients who have suffered two or more instances of clinical depression are far more likely to relapse after treatment; (x) the introduction of mindfulness, which focuses its practitioners on the current moment and is derived from meditation; (xi) understanding the logic behind ‘living in the moment’ being the avoidance of depression, which focuses on the past, and anxiety, which focuses on the future; (xii) the effectiveness of mindfulness mediation for reducing heart attacks after heart surgery; (xiii) Hayney and colleagues’ 2014 on the effectiveness of mindfulness meditation on improving the immune system; (xiv) a study on the impact of meditation on biological brain ageing; (xv) Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), which combines elements of CBT and mindfulness meditation and demonstrates an ability to lower depression relapse rates in patients with multiple depressive instances in their past.

About the lecturer

Dr Ashok Jansari is a senior lecturer in the Department of Psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London. Dr Jansari’s research interests include memory disorders, prosopagnosia, executive functions, and synaesthesia. Dr Jansari is most famous for his research into prosopagnosia, having made numerous TV appearances, including on BBC1’s The One Show, as well as hosting his own ‘Neuro Talk’ YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/c/DrAshokJansariNeuroTalk/featured

Some of Dr Jansari's recent publications include 'Acquired synaesthesia following 2C-B use' (2019), 'Using virtual reality to investigate multitasking ability in individuals with frontal lobe lesions' (2019), and 'Identification from CCTV: Assessing police super-recogniser ability to spot faces in a crown and susceptibility to change blindness' (2018).