Depression is a very debilitating experience which can undermine your ability to function well in all dimensions of your life. The British Psychological Society reported, how we see the future can actually make us depressed today. What this means is that pessimistic views of the future may not be the result of depression but may instead be the cause of it.
Researchers Ann Marie Roepke and Professor Martin Seligman from the University of Pennsylvania have come to this conclusion after a review of the literature on depression and prospection. Prospection is the mental representation of futures which are possible. It has been proposed by Roepke and Seligman that various kinds of faulty prospection can drive depression. The types of faulty prospection considered are poor evaluation of possible futures, poor generation of possible futures, and negative beliefs dealing with the future
It has been proposed by the researchers that depressed mood and poor functioning may in turn maintain faulty prospection and therefore lead to the feeding of a vicious cycle. It is the position of these researchers that strategies which are drawn from cognitive behavioural therapy can treat faulty prospection. Cognitive behavioural therapy is a form of talk therapy which tackles patterns of thinking which can lead to problems with a person’s mood or behaviour.
This study has been published in the British Journal of Clinical Psychology. Prospection is generally seen as being adaptive. However, when it does not go right it results in disruptions of emotion and motivation. Generally a negative view of the future is seen as one symptom of depression. However, these researchers have suggested that negative prospection is in fact the core causal element of depression. It therefore becomes possible that prospection based techniques may lead to new treatment strategies for depression and other emotional disorders.
