The therapy helps the brain work more efficiently and lifts 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.
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).
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One study reveals that depression doubles the size of an important brain network—find out why that’s not a good thing.
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The effect of depression goes deep —right into the physical structure of the brain.
Research has uncovered a wide array of startling ways depression can fundamentally reshape the brain’s wiring, chemistry and even its aging process.
From shrinking gray matter to disrupting critical networks that govern everything from decision-making to the sense of smell, the impact is profound.
This article explores 11 cutting-edge studies that reveal how depression goes beyond just feelings of sadness—it alters the brain in ways scientists are only beginning to fully understand.
Those that adhered to this diet had a 33 percent reduced chance of developing depression.
Those that adhered to this diet had a 33 percent reduced chance of developing depression.
A diet rich in vegetables, nuts, fruits and fish could lower depression risk by up to a third, research suggests.The results come from studies on tens of thousands of people around the world.The so-called ‘Mediterranean diet’ is also linked to reduced inflammation in the body.Anti-inflammatory foods include olive oil, legumes, and many other foods rich in plant fibre, vitamins and minerals.Foods that increase inflammation in the body, such as sugar and saturated fats, were linked to higher depression risk.Dr Camille Lassale, the study’s lead author, said:“There is compelling evidence to show that there is a relationship between the quality of your diet and your mental health.This relationship goes beyond the effect of diet on your body size or other aspects of health that can in turn affect your mood.”The results come from an analysis of 41 different studies.Of these, four examined the link between depression and diet in 36,556 people.The results showed that those that adhered to the Mediterranean diet more closely had a 33% reduced chance of developing depression than those who shunned it.Five of the studies showed that eating foods high in saturated fat, sugar and processed foods was linked to a higher risk of depression.Dr Lassale said:
“A pro-inflammatory diet can induce systemic inflammation, and this can directly increase the risk for depression.There is also emerging evidence that shows that the relationship between the gut and brain plays a key role in mental health and that this axis is modulated by gastrointestinal bacteria, which can be modified by our diet.”Dr Tasnime Akbaraly, study co-author, said:
The study was published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry (Lassale et al., 2018).“By showing that an adherence to healthy dietary patterns is associated with a reduced risk of depressive disorders, we contribute to the growing body of evidence regarding the importance of our daily diets to our mental and brain health.
Added to recent randomised trials showing beneficial effects of dietary improvement on depression outcomes, there are now strong arguments in favour of regarding diet as mainstream in psychiatric medicine.”
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One way that depression could be ‘good’ for you comes from a radical positive view of depression.
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:
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).
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