Vividness of imagery and affective response to episodic memories and episodic future thoughts: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Recalling personal past events and imagining personal future events are closely linked, yet also show differences. It has been claimed that episodic future thinking produces stronger intensity of in-the-moment affect than does recalling episodic memories [Schubert, T., Eloo, R.

Future-Directed Thinking and Its Relationship to Subjective Well-Being in Older Adults.

Age-related changes in future-directed thinking may be important for well-being. Older and younger adults generated idiographic anticipated experiences for the next week, the next year, and the next 5-10 years, using an adapted fluency measure. Relative to younger adults, older adults maintained a focus on the immediate future but frequency of anticipated events declined for the medium and longer term.

Evaluating Augmented Depression Therapy (ADepT): study protocol for a pilot randomised controlled trial.

Background: While existing psychological treatments for depression are effective for many, a significant proportion of depressed individuals do not respond to current approaches and few remain well over the long-term. Anhedonia (a loss of interest or pleasure) is a core symptom of depression which predicts a poor prognosis but has been neglected by existing treatments. Augmented Depression Therapy (ADepT) has been co-designed with service users to better target anhedonia alongside other features of depression.

Working adults' well-being: An online self-help goal-based intervention.

Unlabelled: An online self-help goal-setting and planning (GAP) intervention to improve working adults' well-being was tested using a longitudinal, randomized crossover design. The study sought to (1) test the effectiveness of the intervention relative to wait-list controls; and (2) test the stability of effects over a 3-month follow-up period. Participants were recruited from the UK Civil Service and were randomized to either a GAP intervention or a wait-list control condition.

Future-directed thinking in first-episode psychosis.

Objectives: This study employed the Future Thinking Task (MacLeod et al., 2005, Br. J.

Psychological Well-Being and Anticipated Positive Personal Events: Their Relationship to Depression.

Unlabelled: Well-being is now defined in a number of multicomponent ways. One approach to defining well-being-psychological well-being (PWB; Ryff, )-encompasses six dimensions of positive functioning. This study's first aim was to compare PWB self-report scores from a group of depressed participants (N = 26) with a non-depressed group (N = 26).

Underlying motivation in the approach and avoidance goals of depressed and non-depressed individuals.

Neurobiological theories predict decreased approach motivation and increased avoidance motivation in depression, but the results of previous studies have been equivocal. This study addressed a key limitation of previous research by assessing participants' underlying motivation for adopting their goals. Depressed (N=26) and non-depressed (N=33) participants listed approach and avoidance goals and wrote down their underlying reasons for adopting those goals.

Genetic copy number variation and general cognitive ability.

Differences in genomic structure between individuals are ubiquitous features of human genetic variation. Specific copy number variants (CNVs) have been associated with susceptibility to numerous complex psychiatric disorders, including attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder, autism-spectrum disorders and schizophrenia. These disorders often display co-morbidity with low intelligence.

A self-help, positive goal-focused intervention to increase well-being in people with depression.

Self-help interventions are an accessible, first-step treatment for depression. Well-being interventions focus on increasing people's resources and bringing about positive feelings and behaviours and could enhance self-help interventions for depression by increasing well-being as well as reducing depression. The present study tested the effectiveness of a self-help, well-being intervention (Goal-setting and Planning, GAP) in both increasing well-being and reducing depression within a sample from a depression self-help organization.

Well-being, positivity and mental health: an introduction to the special issue.

Enhancing well-being, as opposed to reducing distress, has traditionally not been a focus for clinical practice. There are differences in views about the nature of well-being, but enhancing well-being in clinical settings is a straightforward goal whatever concept of well-being is adopted. Reasons for adopting a well-being enhancing, as well as a distress-reducing, focus include the fact that many psychological problems do not fit the simple acute treatment model of disorder, that positive experience inhibits negative experience, and that people can benefit from therapists seeing them as more than the sum of their problems.

Painful engagement in deliberate self-harm: The role of conditional goal setting.

Conditional goal setting is the tendency for people to see attainment of their future personal goals as necessary for their well-being. It has been argued that this represents an unhealthy way of relating to one's goals, as well as being particularly problematic when goals are perceived as unlikely. High conditional goal setting has been found to be related to depression and to hopelessness.

Genome-wide association study identifies five loci associated with lung function.

Pulmonary function measures are heritable traits that predict morbidity and mortality and define chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). We tested genome-wide association with forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV(1)) and the ratio of FEV(1) to forced vital capacity (FVC) in the SpiroMeta consortium (n = 20,288 individuals of European ancestry). We conducted a meta-analysis of top signals with data from direct genotyping (n < or = 32,184 additional individuals) and in silico summary association data from the CHARGE Consortium (n = 21,209) and the Health 2000 survey (n < or = 883).

Runs of homozygosity in European populations.

Estimating individual genome-wide autozygosity is important both in the identification of recessive disease variants via homozygosity mapping and in the investigation of the effects of genome-wide homozygosity on traits of biomedical importance. Approaches have tended to involve either single-point estimates or rather complex multipoint methods of inferring individual autozygosity, all on the basis of limited marker data. Now, with the availability of high-density genome scans, a multipoint, observational method of estimating individual autozygosity is possible.

Future-directed thinking and depression in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis.

Background: Research has shown that depression is associated with a view of the future characterized by reduced anticipation of future positive experiences, but not necessarily increased anticipation of future negative experiences. The aim of the present study was to investigate how participants with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (MS) anticipated their future in terms of positive and negative events.

Design: A mixed design compared three groups of participants on a measure of future thinking using an adapted verbal fluency paradigm.

Goal pursuit, goal self-concordance, and the accessibility of autobiographical knowledge.

Recent theory suggests that personal goals influence the accessibility of autobiographical knowledge. We suggest that this effect is moderated by goal self-concordance: the extent to which a goal is pursued for autonomous rather than controlling reasons. Cueing paradigms were used to measure the accessibility of autobiographical knowledge relating to (i) goals that participants were and were not pursuing, and (ii) currently pursued goals that were high and low in self-concordance.

Dysphoric adolescents' causal explanations and expectancies for approach and avoidance goals.

Relatively little research has studied emotional disturbance from a motivational perspective. The current study aimed to investigate personal goal systems at different levels of analysis, namely, personal goals, associated causal explanations and goal expectancies, as a function of dysphoria. Dysphoric (n = 28) and non-dysphoric (n = 28) adolescents (16-18-yr-olds) selected from a larger school sample completed tasks that measured number of approach goals and avoidance goals, causal explanations for goals, and perceived likelihood and control estimates for idiographic goals.

Well-being and the anticipation of future positive experiences: The role of income, social networks, and planning ability.

The present study aims to answer two questions: (1) are expectations of future positive experiences related to well-being in the general population?; and (2) what factors (social, psychological, economic) enable people to have expectations of future positive experiences. A community sample (N = 84) was assessed on a measure of anticipation of future positive and negative experiences, factors that might enable positive anticipation (measures of income, social networks, planning ability, and affective capacity) and measures of subjective well-being (positive and negative affect and life satisfaction). Subjective well-being was related to having more anticipated positive experiences, which was in turn related to having a large social network, having a high number of steps in plans to achieve goals, and, more marginally, to having a high household income.

Retrospective and prospective cognitions in adolescents: anxiety, depression, and positive and negative affect.

Research with anxious and depressed adults has suggested that anxiety is related to an increased anticipation of both negative memories and negative expectancies whereas depression is related to a reduction in positive memories and expectancies. The present study examined whether anxiety and depression in 123 school-aged adolescents would show the same pattern. Small groups completed a memory and future thinking task in which they were asked to generate future and past, positive and negative events.

Beliefs about alcohol among UK Jews and Protestants: do they fit the alcohol-depression hypothesis?

Background: Some research has suggested that Jews drink less alcohol than other cultural groups, and may have different beliefs about its use. Differences in beliefs about alcohol, and different patterns of use, may play a role in accounting for cultural and gender variations in depression prevalence. Alcohol may act as an escape route from depression, thus deflating depression rates in certain groups of people, in particular, men from Protestant backgrounds.