'Kindness' meditation can help activate positive memories for people with depression, new study finds
CTV
A new peer-reviewed study has found that a daily guided kindness meditation practice can help people who have struggled with depression to activate their autobiographical memories, resulting in feelings of kindness for themselves and others.
The ancient practice of meditation is known to be helpful in easing challenges such as anxiety and stress, amongst other benefits. Now, a new study has found that it can also help people recall specific memories to combat depression.
The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS ONE on Wednesday, says that a guided “kindness” meditation practice can help people who've struggled with depression to activate their autobiographical memories, resulting in feelings of kindness towards themselves and others.
Kindness meditation is a guided practice where participants visualize different individuals, such as themselves, someone they easily love, a stranger, or someone they find difficult to love. It also involves repeating mantras which encourage happiness, health, loving-kindness and peace to oneself and to others.
Autobiographical memory, which is a person’s memory of episodes or experiences that occurred in their life, is an essential cognitive function for self-concept, emotion regulation, and problem solving.
Meanwhile, those struggling with depression often have disrupted cognitive processes, leading to thoughts of sadness or disinterest in activities which previously brought joy.
“Loving-kindness meditation was shown to improve features of autobiographical memory retrieval in remitted depression which might reduce a cognitive vulnerability to depression,” write the study authors. “The meditation further acted as a buffer for the effects of autobiographical memory when cognitive reactivity was induced.”
The researchers collected data from 50 students at the University of St. Andrews in the U.K., who have had a history with depression. To examine their autobiographical memory, they asked the students to write details of what memories came to mind after the heard specific cue words.
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