Category: Depression

The bias may make it harder for depressed and anxious people to take a risk on a new relationship, job or other career opportunity.

People with symptoms of depression and anxiety tend to focus more on the mistakes they have made in the past, research finds.

This makes it harder for them to take advantage of potentially beneficial opportunities in the future.

Worse, other studies have shown that people who are depressed tend to believe that bad things that happened to them were inevitable.

The bias may make it harder for depressed and anxious people to take a risk on a new relationship, job or other career opportunity.

One suggestion for escaping this cycle is to consciously focus more on past successes.

Unfortunately, depressed people also have a difficulty appreciating or recalling positive experiences.

Cognitive-behavioural therapy is one way of changing habits of thought that might affect decision-making.

In contrast to the depressed and anxious, people who are emotionally resilient find it easier to adapt to a rapidly changing environment and to take advantage of opportunities.

Professor Sonia Bishop, study co-author, explained:

“When everything keeps changing rapidly, and you get a bad outcome from a decision you make, you might fixate on what you did wrong, which is often the case with clinically anxious or depressed people.

Conversely, emotionally resilient people tend to focus on what gave them a good outcome, and in many real-world situations that might be key to learning to make good decisions.”

The researchers tested the decision-making of over 300 people for their study, some with depression and others with anxiety.

Professor Bishop said:

“We wanted to see if this weakness was unique to people with anxiety, or if it also presented in people with depression, which often goes hand in hand with anxiety.

We also sought to find out if the problem was a general one or specific to learning about potential reward or potential threat.”

The results showed that people with symptoms of depression and anxiety had the most trouble making sound decisions.

Professor Bishop said:

“We found that people who are emotionally resilient are good at latching on to the best course of action when the world is changing fast.

People with anxiety and depression, on the other hand, are less able to adapt to these changes.

Our results suggest they might benefit from cognitive therapies that redirect their attention to positive, rather than negative, outcomes.”

The study was published in the journal eLife (Gagne et al., 2020).

One way that depression could be ‘good’ for you comes from a radical positive view of depression.

People who are depressed find it easier to let go of goals that are hurting them, research finds.

Depression could be a useful mechanism to stop people doing things that are making them unhappy.

For example, depression could stop people from:

• working too hard,
• taking on too many commitments outside work,
• or aiming for an impossible goal.

Unobtainable goals could spark bouts of depression, which then encourage the person to give up.

This unusual view of depression as a ‘useful’ state comes from a paper published in the Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry.

For the study, some people who were depressed and some who were not were asked to solve some anagrams.

The trick was that some of the anagrams could not be solved.

Ms Katharina Koppe, the study’s first author, explained:

“These unsolvable tasks represented unattainable goals, which it was necessary to give up as soon as possible in order to use the time effectively.”

The results showed that people who were depressed spent less time on the unsolvable anagrams than the control group.

However, depressed people spent the same amount of time on the anagrams that could be solved — showing they still pushed on with tasks that could be completed.

Professor Klaus Rothermund, who co-authored the study, said:

“The general lack of motivation that is typical of many patients with depression apparently gives rise to a greater ability to abandon goals, and one could use this in therapy.”

Giving up on an impossible task is clearly beneficial — as long as the unattainable goal is replaced with something meaningful that can be achieved.

Ms Koppe said:

“If we stop seeing depression simply as a psychological burden, which just needs to be removed through therapy, we might also be able to use the patient’s crisis as an opportunity for personal development.”

The study was published in the Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry (Koppe et al., 2016).

The more mental health problems people had early on, the greater their memory problems in later life.

Episodes of depression early in life are linked to memory loss later on, research finds.

People who experience depression and anxiety in their 20s, 30s and 40s tend to develop memory problems in their 50s.

It suggests depression might lead to dementia in later life.

Tackling depression and anxiety in young adulthood may help to reduce memory problems as well as the risk of dementia.

Approaches such as meditation, exercise and maintaining strong relationships can all help.

Dr. Darya Gaysina, study co-author, said:

“We found that the more episodes of depression people experience in their adulthood, the higher risk of cognitive impairment they have later in life.

This finding highlights the importance of effective management of depression to prevent the development of recurrent mental health problems with long-term negative outcomes.”

The conclusions come from a study that followed over 18,000 babies born in 1958, who have been followed into adulthood.

The results showed that the more mental health problems people had early on, the greater their memory problems in later life.

A single episode of depression or anxiety had little effect later on.

However, two or three episodes in their 20s, 30s or 40s were linked to worse memory function in their 50s.

Ms Amber John, the study’s first author, said:

“We knew from previous research that depressive symptoms experienced in mid adulthood to late adulthood can predict a decline in brain function in later life but we were surprised to see just how clearly persistent depressive symptoms across three decades of adulthood are an important predictor of poorer memory function in mid-life.

…this research should be a wake up call to do what you can to protect your mental health, such as maintaining strong relationships with friends and family, taking up physical exercise or practicing mindfulness meditation—all of which have been shown to boost mental health.”

The study was published in the The British Journal of Psychiatry (John et al., 2019).