Depression is a very pervasive and chronic illness that affects 322 million people in the world, according to the World Health Organization from a 2017 mental illness report. (World Health Organization, 2017). In the span of 2005 to 2015 there has been an 18.4% increase in the number of depression cases worldwide (Kahrilas et al.). It is important to keep in mind that those numbers were before the world wide pandemic, and before racial injustices were voiced, so these numbers have only increased since then.
Depression affects many aspects of a person's life, such as interpersonal relationships, work performance, it even puts a burden on the healthcare system due to the additional finances put towards finding a treatment for this illness. An individual's well being is affected due to depression, and this effect can take a toll on the society too. A lot of people who undergo treatment for depression almost are never fully cured forever. For example, about 45-65% of individuals’ who undergo treatment for depression, never reach remission for their depressive symptoms, while those who do reach remission will fall under relapse within 1-2 years. A lot of treatments for depression like to emphasize how to fix an individual's negative emotions, and do little to work on increasing an individuals’ positive emotions. But, if we focus on improving positive emotions of depressive individuals, instead of trying to figure out ways to get rid of negative emotions, there could be a more efficient and powerful way to cure depressive symptoms.
Emotional reactivity can refer to one's initial baseline affective response, marked by alterations in perception, behavior, feeling, and physiology whereas emotion regulation suggests a change from that baseline activity, that influences the initial emotional response according to Ian J Kahrilas. This is relevant to depression, because depression likely involves bidirectional processes between the two.In study one, Ian focused on when participants savor the moment, which portrays a link between affectivity and depression. He divides symptoms into three sets of categories: anxious arousal are symptoms specific to anxiety disorder, negative affectivity can be a cluster of symptoms that explain the shared variance between both depression and anxiety, and the symptoms of positive affectivity specific to depression. There were three temporal domains of savoring: anticipating, savoring the moment, and reminiscing. Kahrilas made a hypothesis that savoring the moment would be the distinct predictor of the 3 temporal domains of savoring of depression and one's ability to attend to moments as they occur in the present moment, would have the strongest specificity for depressive symptoms, and lastly he had also predicted that savoring the moment, would distinctly mediate the pathway between affectivity and depression, or that savoring the moment would pose a mechanism between the two variables. Results were unsupportive of his hypothesis, he found positive relationships between positive affectivity in each of the temporal domains savor, as well as a negative relation between positive affectivity and depression. The directionality of relations had flipped: now turn to negative relation to each of the temporal domains of savoring and a positive relation of depression. Next savoring the moment was the sole predictor of depression, perhaps momentary savoring has more specificity. Depression might be a more effective intervention target. The conclusion that could then be made was that for those with low positive affectivity and high negative affectivity, savoring the moment may reduce depression. Outstanding questions: what are the neural correlates that support positive emotion regulation, and are they modifiable?
A lot of past research has focused on either only positive emotion, or solely only negative emotion. In study two, what they did was focus on trying to delve into both positive and negative emotions within depression, and to do that researchers had to create a novel stimulus paradigm (NSP). Then, researchers presented 120 standardized images of either of the following: unpleasant to pleasant, and not arousing at all to very arousing. Out of the 120 image sets: 40 negative, 40 positive, and 40 were neutral. For the positive and negative image sets, participants had three sets of instructions: increase or decrease the emotional intensity they feel in response to the images, or just passively watch them. Then for the neutral image they would have them passively watch. After participants saw the 40 images, they would rate how positive or negative they were feeling, the arousal of that emotion, and also the difficulty of the task. Results showed, these regulatory processes came before any reactivity processes, so when people were asked to increase the emotional intensity they felt in response to negative images, that manifested about 1/10 of a second following stimulus presentation. The importance of this study is that there are differences between positive and negative emotion regulation, how they begin and end in different processes. This proves that context and task demands matter. Colleagues were able to conclude that for reactivity, there was a stable arousal and valence effect throughout the time course, and for regulation, negative regulatory processes unfolded way sooner ( at 124ms to 259ms) than positive regulatory processes (259ms to 740ms).
In another article, “Prevalence of Depression During the COVID-19 Outbreak: a Meta-analysis of Community-based Studies”, by Juan Notivol and Colleagues focused on a very important and popular topic of today, the increase in the mental illness of depression across the world specifically due to the pandemic. Researchers looked within community based studies on depression conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic .“From the first of January, 2020 till May 8th, 2020 colleagues examined cross-sectional community based studies put on PubMed or Web of Science which reported prevalence of depression” (Notival, 2021). Results for around 600 to 7,236 participants around the age of 32 years old to 40 years old, both being men and women, gave a response rate of 66-99% on the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS).
Both articles discussed above, do a good job addressing the urgent issue that is increasingly alarming every single day. Kahrilas focusing on how, research needs to have a new perspective going into treating the symptoms of depression, such as paying more attention to the negative emotions one feels due to depression. Kahrilas research can easily be applied to Notivol and colleagues findings which suggest that “the proportion of depression in the general population is 7 times higher during the COVID-19 outbreak” (Notivol ). If both researchers were to work together in order to use those new techniques that Kahrilas had suggested which focused on the negative emotions of a clinically depressed human, we can maybe find a stronger and have a longer lasting effective treatment of depression since Notivol and colleagues have proven that depression has only gotten worse because of the COVID-19 pandemic and now more than ever we need to bring urgency towards it. All around the world starting from kids, to teenagers, to college students, and even adults are going through this mind wrenching illness which can be insanely hard to fight by oneself, and the only way we might be able to do something about this is if we educate others about this mental illness and educate people about the importance of one's mental health more than ever now.
References:
Bueno-Notivol, Juan, et al. “Prevalence of Depression during the COVID-19 Outbreak: A Meta-Analysis of Community-Based Studies.” International Journal of Clinical and Health Psychology, vol. 21, no. 1, 2021, p. 100196., doi:10.1016/j.ijchp.2020.07.007.
Kahrilas, Ian J., et al. “Savoring the Moment: A Link between Affectivity and Depression.” International Journal of Wellbeing, vol. 10, no. 2, 2020, pp. 19–36., doi:10.5502/ijw.v10i2.779.
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