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Developmental Psychology Essay

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As Elizabeth Wurtzel (2002) states “That's the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it's impossible to ever see the end.” Depression is a universal illness that affects an ever increasing proportion of society, which can lead to serious repercussions. This piece discusses what factors can contribute to depression in terms of developmental psychology.
Statistics show that 1 in 4 people within the United Kingdom will experience various types of mental health issues on an annual basis (Mental Health Foundation, 2014). This therefore makes it an alarming statistic for modern day society. Depression is a universal human affliction that can be traced back to early civilisations, which is evident in many texts such as the bible, Greek and Roman classics and even Shakespeare. (Hammen, …show more content…

It is critical that an infant receives constant attention, nurturing and emotional encouragement. Without stimulating this desire and giving vital mutual interactions, the infant can be lead to believe that the caregiver is hostile, therefore, will undoubtedly refuse instructions and internalise an angry and protective style of coping individually. (Cohn and Tronick, 1989) In addition the original psychodynamic approach has transformed into a contemporary version called the object relations theory (Rank, 1920). The theory suggest that depression is equivalent to bereavement where a child has lost an ‘object’. The object in question refers to something a subject has a strong connection to (I.e. the caregiver). With the loss of the ‘object’ a child can begin to develop very negative emotions, but unlike bereavement the loss can cause delayed symptoms of depression due to introjected

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