The Role Of Cognitive Factors In Psychopathology

We are talking about anxiety, sadness, guilt (as an emotion), or behavior that is very poorly regulated and therefore poorly adapted. Some are able to identify an anxiety attack, a self-harming crisis in depression, or rituals that a person with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) tends to perform.

However, processes such as attention, reasoning, or memory are different depending on the psychological disorder a person suffers from. In other words, these processes are not the same in people who control their behavior as in those individuals who have behavioral disorders that affect their daily lives. At the same time, however, this does not mean that these processes always appear in the same way.

For example, when a person suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) or traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), he or she has a really poorly regulated anticipation of the situation, but this does not mean that he or she has always behaved or should always to behave in that way.

The role of cognitive factors in psychopathology

Psychological processes that can be seen to change in various psychological disorders include memory, reasoning, thinking, attention, perception, and emotion regulation.

Here are a few of them, along with illustrative examples that point to a wide variety of disturbances. The aim is to understand a little better what the role of cognitive factors in psychopathology really is.

Attention: excessive or defective

Attention is a process that describes very well the importance of cognitive factors in psychopathology. It is a psychological process that shows a poorly adapted pattern in those people who suffer from psychological disorders.

This pattern is associated with excessive alertness and attention span. People who suffer from psychological disorders tend to pay more attention to stimuli that respond to their fears and concerns.

For example, in social phobia, a person pays selective attention to negative information and personal activity. People with social phobia not only show signs of excessive alertness, telling him that he is not well received, but also sensations in his own body, such as changes in heart rate or breathing rhythm. This is self-attention.

Memory games

Numerous phenomena occur in the cognitive process of memory depending on the psychological disorder a person suffers from. A few examples of this are:

• Selective Memory: People who suffer from panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, traumatic stress disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, mood disorders, or eating disorders usually remember information by adapting it to their own fears and thus validating it. Thus, a person with a depressive disorder remembers information that confirms that his or her family does not understand or support him or her, erasing those good memories that say something to the contrary.
• Memory that is too general: Autobiographical memory can be used to remind a person of something special or something too general. In some mood disorders, eating disorders, or traumatic stress disorder, a person may remember things vaguely and fragmented, after which he or she distorts the memory.
• Renewable Memory: In some traumatic stress disorders or panic disorders, the memory process is captured by disturbing and unwanted memories that revolve around a traumatic situation.
• Confidence in memory: In other psychological disorders, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, trust in well-functioning memory is lost, which in turn leads to a person performing compulsive functions. For example, if a person can never be sure whether the lights at home are turned off or whether the door is securely locked.

Distortions of reasoning

Although we all have distortions in our reasoning, the importance of cognitive factors in psychopathology can be seen through much more extreme biases. In this way, we can find distortions of reasoning related to various psychological disorders, such as:

• Distortions in the interpretation of ambiguous stimuli: In disorders such as generalized anxiety disorder or mood disorders, a person tends to interpret ambiguous stimuli as negative. These stimuli can be, for example, gestures or changes in the facial expressions of other people.
• Negative attribution style : This distortion of reasoning is typical of depressive disorders. A negative attribution style results in negative events arising from internal causes that are stable and do not change. Psychotic disorders, on the other hand, often show a positive style of attribution; the reason is always different.
• Assessing Probabilities: In certain psychological disorders, a person tends to overestimate the probability of some bad events and their terrible consequences. This occurs in phobias, obsessive-compulsive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, traumatic stress disorder, and psychotic or depressive disorders.

Traps of thought

Chewing, penetrating and caring for negative thoughts are often the elements that come to the fore in people suffering from psychological disorders. The importance of these cognitive factors in psychopathology is observed, for example, in obsessive-compulsive disorder, where the intrusion of negative thoughts and recurrent obsessive thoughts often emerge. Not only are these thoughts more common, they are also more intense or powerful.

Thoughts of people with depression like “ I’m not worth anything ”, “ She no longer loves me ” with people with anxiety, or “ This contaminates me ” for people with obsessive-compulsive disorder are very typical changes in cognition. Usually, those people who suffer from some kind of psychological disorder overestimate these thoughts until they become part of their own reality.

For example, thought suppression is particularly problematic in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder. In this case, when a person seeks to use only his own will to avoid thinking about certain things, to divert his attention elsewhere, or to eliminate certain thoughts, what is usually achieved here has the exact opposite effect.

Conclusions: The difficulty of change

Understanding the importance of cognitive factors in psychopathology can make us see how complex change can be if these elements are not handled properly. For example, when planning treatment for a patient with obsessive-compulsive disorder, it would be important to understand that:

• There are some cognitive factors that may perpetuate the problem.
• This cognitive burden may act as a barrier to the success of other measures included in that treatment plan.

Thus, if a person with depression has a negative attribution style, it is very difficult for the patient to get rid of this systematic error, in the routine of which negative and positive events are mixed. For this reason, action by a person skilled in the art to alleviate and cure the disorder is necessary.