Updated for AQA 2025 Specification – Teaching from September 2025 onwards

This resource is designed for teaching The Cognitive Approach to Explaining and Treating Depression as part of Clinical Psychology and Mental Health in the AQA A-Level Psychology (2025 Specification). It has been fully updated to reflect the revised specification requirements, which expect students to describe, apply, and evaluate Beck’s cognitive theory and Ellis’s ABC model as explanations and treatments for depression.

Key concepts covered include negative schemas, faulty information processing, the negative triad, irrational beliefs, activating events, and cognitive therapies such as CBT and REBT.

If you are teaching the 2019 specification, please visit my shop for the earlier version of this topic.

This fully editable lesson develops secure AO1 knowledge through clear explanations, structured notes, and visual diagrams of Beck’s and Ellis’s cognitive approaches. Students then apply cognitive theory to real-world scenarios and exam-style questions before building AO3 evaluation skills through structured discussion, classification tasks, and critical reasoning activities.

The lesson is designed to be teacher-led but student-active, with frequent retrieval, Think–Pair–Share prompts, and scaffolded evaluation to support exam success.

What’s Included:

Fully Editable Lesson Slides - Clear explanations of Beck’s and Ellis’s cognitive approaches to depression, including CBT and REBT. Slides include retrieval starters, success criteria, structured notes, diagrams, worked examples, Think–Pair–Share questions, scenario prompts, application checkpoints, evaluation tasks, and a structured plenary.

AO2 Application Worksheet - Scenario-based task applying cognitive explanations to a real-life case (Yasmin’s redundancy), focusing on activating events, irrational beliefs, consequences, and cognitive vulnerabilities. Designed to build confidence with exam-style application.

Evaluation Worksheet - Structured activity exploring key strengths and limitations of the cognitive approach, including research evidence, CBT effectiveness, explanatory scope, cognitive primacy, and environmental influences. Includes stretch questions to promote higher-level evaluation.

Exam Practice Question Sheet - A 4-mark AO1 question assessing students’ ability to outline one cognitive approach to treating depression, with clear response space for classwork, homework, or formative assessment.

How This Resource Reflects the 2025 Specification Changes:

• Fully aligned with AQA 2025 Clinical Psychology and Mental Health
• Covers the updated sub-topic: The Cognitive Approach to Explaining and Treating Depression
• Supports AO1, AO2, and AO3 through explanation, application, and evaluation
• Emphasises scenario-based reasoning and clinical examples, as required by the revised specification