Depressed People Ruminate More On Their Troubles

We all have our ups and downs, good days and bad days, but when a fight with our better half, the kid's problems in school, loss of a dear one or even a sarcastic remark from a stranger becomes a big deal and takes over our life it's time to pause and re-evaluate our attitude. Fortunately most people get over these daily challenges and move on with their lives, but for some few of us, they become the pillar around which their whole life gravitates and they develop depression. A new study suggests that part of the reason people develop depression may be that they get stuck on bad thoughts because they're unable to turn their attention away.

People who don't recover from negative events seem to keep going over their troubles. Jutta Joormann, of the University of Miami says people with depression "basically get stuck in a mindset where they relive what happened to them over and over again. Even though they think, oh, it's not helpful, I should stop thinking about this, I should get on with my life - they can't stop doing it". It's like a loophole in which they get caught and they don't know how to escape.

It is possible that people who get stuck on negative thoughts have problems turning their mind to a new topic. Joormann and her colleagues thought people with depression might have a problem with working memory. Working memory isn't just about remembering a shopping list or doing multiplication in your head; it's about what thoughts you keep active in your mind.

Given a list of three words in a specific order, people with depression had trouble re-ordering the words in their head and took longer if they were asked to remember the words in reverse order which suggests a less flexible thinking than people without depression have. Depressed people also had a particularly hard time if words had negative meanings, like "death" or "sadness". It's like the words get stuck in their working memory. Needless to say, people who had trouble with this simple task are also more likely to ruminate on their troubles, keeping them present in their mind and in their life for longer and therefore suffering from their effects at a greater extent. Learning how to turn your mind away from negative thoughts might prove to be effective in easing depression's pains.