The development of the self-schema in adult depression.

Literature is reviewed questioning whether the negative self-references of depressives are regularly founded in a cognitive self-schema as would be predicted by Beck's cognitive model of depression. Using methods of memory research, 15 short-term depressives were compared with 15 long-term depressives and 30 nondepressives on the subjective orgainization of self-descriptive adjectives in multitrial free recall. All subjects were clients at a private counseling agency. As hypothesized, short-term depressives showed the lowest levels of subjective organization of personal adjectives. These group differences remained significant in subsequent analyses considering alternative explanations such as ability, expectancy of success, and certainty in self-reference differences. The results are interpreted within a developmental extension of Beck's model. It is suggested that the self-schema of the short-term depressive is not a strong organizer of personal information but that as depression endures, the self-schema reorganizes to gain predepression levels. The implications of this developmental self-schema model are discussed together with methodological caveats for future researchers.