According to a press release published last week from Stanford Psychology Department, girls are able to re-train their brains not to overreact to negative stimuli and subsequently could be less likely to experience episodes of depression .
It is believed by cognitive psychologists that when a person becomes depressed they are likely to focus their attention to negative experiences and are more likely to evaluate a situation with cynicism and pessimism rather than being able to recognise the positives.
The ongoing research at the Stanford Psychology Department has examine the effect of subconsciously training the brains of girls aged between 10 and 14 years old who are regarded as ‘at risk of depression’ due to the fact that they have either suffered from an episode of depression or that their mothers have been previously diagnosed as clinically depressed .
The preliminary conclusion of the research have shown that by using a dot-probe task which adverts attention towards positive images and memories and away from negative images, the girls in the study were less stressed and demonstrated fewer symptoms of stress and depression in the stress tests undertaken at the Stanford Mood and Anxiety Disorders Laboratory a week after completing the experiment.
This research demonstrates that there are means and ways of altering though patterns that can cause destructive effects to mental and physical well being. If a dot-probe task is not to hand practicing mindfulness has been shown to alter the relationship between thoughts and subjective experience of emotions and feelings.
