
Millions of Americans who experience major depression will suffer a relapse, but a new study suggests that learning to focus on the positive, rather than the negatives in everyday life, might help reduce those odds. “What we started to realize is it’s not just about how people with depression process negative information but there’s something interesting about how they process positive information that might really be important in sustaining their negative mood or depressed mood,” said study co-author Lira Yoon, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Thinking “it might be important to examine both at the same time,” Yoon’s team analyzed 44 past studies to better understand how much time those with a history of major depression spend processing negative and positive information. The meta-analysis included more than 2,000 people who had a history of major depressive disorder and more than 2,200 without it. The studies looked at participants’ responses to negative, positive and neutral information, such as photos of people or words that were happy, sad or neither. The mentally healthy participants tended to respond faster to emotional and non-emotional information, regardless of whether it was positive, negative or neutral. They also had a significant difference in how much time they spent processing positive versus negative information. Those who had major depressive disorder spent more time on the… read on > read on >