Depression is undoubtedly one of the biggest problems in the field of mental health. Although many models have been developed for the treatment of depression, the most frequently used and effective one is the Cognitive Model (Beck, 1963). According to this model, emotional disorders are the result of unrealistic evaluation of life events or disturbances in the way of thinking. In Beck's model, depression is defined by three concepts: "cognitive triad", "cognitive errors" and "schemas". The cognitive triad is based on the negative evaluation of oneself, one's environment and one's future based on negative schemas. It is responsible for the development and persistence of depression symptoms. Cognitive errors occur automatically during the interpretation of events and situations and the adaptation of incoming information to the schema, causing the individual's negative thoughts and depressive beliefs to persist. The concept of schema, on the other hand, includes the "templates", beliefs, rules, in other words, learning and "perspective" that children form while processing information during their interactions with the environment in the first few years of their lives. Once these templates are formed, they are activated in the unconscious in order to interpret the results and events that occur during interactions with the environment, other people and oneself throughout one's life, and thus to form one's reactions (Beck, 1995). They are influenced by the social and cultural background of individuals. In some people, they are more open and flexible to change, while in others they are more rigid. Schemas are considered to be related to psychopathology in proportion to their rigidity. The schemas of depressive people are of this kind, which are rigid and disrupt the functionality of the person (Blackburn, Davidson, & Kendall, 1990). Statements such as "I must be loved by everyone", "I must always perform as well as possible", "I must either be 100% successful or a complete failure" are typical, dysfunctional, rigid schemas seen in depressive patients. The aim of cognitive therapy is to help the patient to review the negative automatic thoughts arising from these negative schemas and to learn to replace them with more realistic and logical thoughts, thus creating more flexible and functional schemas instead of rigid schemas. In this way, the patient will understand how and why his/her depression developed and realize the contribution of himself/herself, his/her environment and his/her negative perspective about the future (Marzillier, 1986; DeRubeis & Feeley, 1990). Various techniques are used to capture and identify core schemas during therapy. One of these techniques is the use of the Dysfunctional Attitudes Scale (DAS). Some studies show that the dysfunctional schemas of depressive patients can be identified by using scales such as FOTS (Burns, 1981).
The Turkish version of the scale was adapted by Şahin and Şahin (1991). The scale consists of 40 items including beliefs, thoughts and attitudes about different situations. Each item is answered on a seven-point Likert-type scale. This rating is as follows: 1= Agree completely, 2= Agree generally, 3= Agree quite a bit, 4= Agree somewhat, 5= Agree rarely, 6= Agree very little, 7= Disagree not at all.