Nowadays, one of the most prevalent disorders is depression. Depression can be defined as both as a syndrome and a disorder, which it consists of a set of symptoms and episodes that are described in diagnostic systems (ICD-10 DSM-IV). The phenomenological approach of depression includes these symptoms and episodes, due to emotional disorders, psychomotor activity and cognitive and behavioral functions. More specifically, as a syndrome it involves episodes of sadness, loss of interest, pessimism, negative beliefs, low self-esteem, changes in sleep and appetite , loss of sexual interest, behavioural passivity and suicidal thoughts. On the other hand, as a disorder have two types that are the unipolar type and the bipolar type. At first, the …show more content…
As it is mentioned above, people, who are suffered by depression, have a decrease in their social and personal activities, while they prefer a passive lifestyle avoiding their liabilities and personal activities that delight them. The “3 cycles” Behavioral Activation Model of Depression, which conducted by Martell et al. in 2001, explains how a negative fact in the life creates negative feelings and then there is an avoidance of patterns, creating and strengthening depression mood. So, the purpose of behavioral model is to replace these avoidance patterns with activation patterns in order to stop the depression mood and this negative and passive lifestyle. The activities that the therapist gives to the patient have a scalar character, beginning from easier challenges to more difficult. For instance, the therapist can be given to a patient with mild to moderate depression as a skill to go to a party, which is a pleasurable activity, and stay there for 20 minutes, which is an accomplishment/mastery activity. Moreover, for a better attainment of this process, the therapist grants to the patient a daily activity monitoring sheet and asks him to complete it. In this sheet, the patient notes his daily activities and evaluates in a 0-10 scale how much pleasure and mastery felt from each integrated activity. These strategies are useful because help patients to drive away their depressed mood and help them to find ways and activities, which lead them to feel joy and satisfaction and also help them to determine particular characteristics of activities, that can use in the future and are likely to feel pleasure and mastery (Beck et al., 1979). This process leads the therapist and the patient to solve the problems and to have the desired outcomes to the