Cognitive Models and Issues

A number of psychological accounts of mood disorders have been proposed. Among these, cognitive models have received a strong measure of empirical support. This has occurred at both the level of theory, specifying specific causal relationships between information processing biases and affect regulation as well as clinical outcomes that follow from the patient‐level implementation of this work. In this chapter, we describe the elements that comprise the current cognitive model of depression, the evidence that supports this theoretical framework and the extension of this framework to the treatment of prevalent clinical disorders. Critical appraisal will focus on a number of important research questions that have been identified in past reviews as requiring further study, as well as those areas where support for the model is weak or contradictory. Our aim is to represent the current state of the field and to suggest important future directions and unresolved issues.