Transcript No Slide Title

vicious circle of mood & memory
old beliefs linked
to the memories
aggravate the
situation further
upsetting emotional
state
depression, social anxiety,
agoraphobia, ocd, posttraumatic
stress disorder, etc
upsetting memories
not yet worked through
from earlier life
experiences
current life
experiences
trigger memories
(feltsense, visual and
shared meaning)
facilitated access to
memories of similar
negative emotional
tone
disorganized nature of partly repressed
emotional memories means that they have
no clear ‘date-time’ stamp on them
depression & imagery research
 Kuyken W & Brewin CR Intrusive memories of childhood abuse during depressive episodes Behav Res
Ther 1994;32:525-8
 Kuyken W & Brewin CR Autobiographical memory
functioning in depression and reports of early abuse
J Abnorm Psychol 1995;104:585-91
 Andrews B Bodily shame as a mediator between
abusive experiences and depression
J Abnorm
Psychol 1995;104:277-85
 Brewin CR Cognitive processing of adverse
experiences Int Rev Psychiat 1996;8:333-9
 Brewin CR, Reynolds M, et al. Autobiographical
memory processes and the course of depression.
J Abnorm Psychol 1999; 108(3): 511-7.
trauma memories & depression 1
 31 sufferers from current depression were asked about
deaths of family or friends & about other major life events
 questioned too about events they felt might have triggered
the current episode of depression & about childhood - for
example harsh discipline or unwanted sexual experiences
 asked too about related memories – these were defined
as spontaneous visual images of specific scenes that had
actually taken place
 87% of these current depression sufferers said yes - they
had experienced 1-5 different intrusive images (av’ge 2.6)
Brewin CR, Hunter E, Carroll F & Tata P Intrusive memories in
depression: an index of schema activation? Psychol Med 1996:26:1271-
trauma memories & depression 2
 55% of these intrusive memory images involved illness
or death; 21% involved relationship or family problems;
18% involved abuse and assault
 memories were usually associated with mixed feelings
of sadness, guilt, anger and helplessness, and to a lesser
extent anxiety and shame
 scoring these depressive memories using the IES showed
that they had similar scores to memories found in PTSD
 memories of past abuse and of assault tended to be
associated with higher IES scores and with severer levels
of depression
clinical implications 1
 it’s common for depression sufferers to be
troubled by significant trauma memories
 high levels of intrusion & associated avoidance
of trauma memories (high IES scores)
are associated with more prolonged
depression even when allowing for the
initial severity of psychiatric symptoms
 it seems likely that asking about trauma
memories & using emotional processing
methods that lower IES scores may well speed
recovery and possibly may even reduce relapse
social anxiety & imagery research
 Hackmann A, Surawy C, et al. Seeing yourself through others'
eyes: A study of spontaneously occurring images in social phobia.
Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy 1998; 26: 3-12
 Wells A. & Papageorgiou C. The observer perspective: biased
imagery in social phobia, agoraphobia, and blood/injury phobia.
Behav Res Ther 1999; 37(7): 653-8.
 Hackmann A, Clark DM, et al. Recurrent images & early memories
in social phobia. Behav Res Ther 2000; 38(6): 601-10.
 Hernández-Guzmán L, González S, et al. Effect of guided imagery
on children's social performance. Behavioural and Cognitive
Psychotherapy 2002; 30: 471-483.
 Hirsch C, and Mathews A. Anticipatory imagery and the development of social anxiety. BABCP Annual Conference Abstracts : pp
11-12. York, 2003.
 Hirsch CR, Meynen T, et al. Negative self-imagery in social anxiety
contaminates social interactions. Memory 2004; 12(4): 496-506