Our work suggests that ‘remembering the good times’ may help build resilience to stress and reduce vulnerability to depression in young people
- Adrian Dahl Askelund
Depression is now the leading cause of disability worldwide, affecting more than 300 million people. The condition often first emerges in adolescence, a critical developmental time period when an individual experiences substantial changes in their brain structure and chemistry. A known risk factor of depression is exposure to early life stress, such as illness, parents’ separation or death, or adverse family circumstances.
“Mental health disorders that first occur in adolescence are more severe and more likely to recur in later life,” says Dr Anne-Laura van Harmelen from the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge, the study’s senior author. “With child and adult mental health services underfunded and overstretched, it is critical that we identify new ways to build resilience, particularly in those adolescents who are most at risk for depression.”
People often engage in reminiscing about past events during their everyday lives, sometimes as a strategy for lifting their mood when they feel sad. A team of researchers from the University of Cambridge and University College London set out to examine whether remembering positive experiences could prove an important way of protecting ourselves against stress when it occurs in adolescence.
To test their hypothesis, the researchers analysed data from 427 young people, average age of 14 years, from Cambridge and the surrounding area, all of whom were considered to be at risk of depression. They examined the effect of recalling positive memories on two signs of vulnerability to depression: negative self-related thoughts and high morning levels of the stress hormone cortisol. The results are published in Nature Human Behaviour.
Image: Friends at sunrise
Credit: minanfotos
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge