Surveying Schematic Mental Model, Perfectionism and Need for Approval, in Depression

The purpose of this research is to investigate two different perspectives on depressive thinking. One viewpoint considers depression as a reflection of increasing general accessibility of negative constructs and depressive memories; the other defines depressive thoughts as a reflection of changes at a more general level of cognitive representation. Method 54 subjects selected by convenient sampling method took part in the study. They were assigned to the following three groups 18 patients suffering from major depression, 18 patients suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder, and finally 18 normal subjects compo-sing the control group (10 female and 8 male in each group). To investigate contrasting predi-cations from the two perspectives, depressed patients, obsessive patients, and normal control groups responded to Dysfunctional Attitude Scale (DAS), perfectionism, DAS-need for approval, and Sentence Completion Task. Findings The result of one-way analysis of variance showed a significant difference between depressed, obsessive, and normal groups on Sentence Completion Task and DAS-need for approval test.Furthermore, the follow up Tukey test indicated a significant difference between depressed and the normal groups; there was not a significant difference between depressed and obsessive groups. Results The results supported schematic mental prediction. Since schematic model was established for perfec-tionism and need for approval in obsessive patients, its exclusive explanation for depressed patients may not be confirmed.