Can imaginal exposure reduce intrusive memories in depression? A case study.

The presence of intrusive memories as an overlapping feature of depression and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) raises the possibility that common therapeutic approaches may be effective. Imaginal exposure (IE) is the gold-standard treatment for PTSD and directly reduces both PTSD and depression symptoms in traumatized individuals. The objective of this pilot study was to use a single-case design to trial the use of IE to target intrusive memories of a negative life event as a treatment for major depression.

Treatment of acute stress disorder: a randomized controlled trial.

Context: Recent trauma survivors with acute stress disorder (ASD) are likely to subsequently develop chronic posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Cognitive behavioral therapy for ASD may prevent PTSD, but trauma survivors may not tolerate exposure-based therapy in the acute phase. There is a need to compare nonexposure therapy techniques with prolonged exposure for ASD.

The use of safety behaviours to manage intrusive memories in depression.

Cognitive models of clinical disorders conceptualise cognitive and behavioural safety-seeking behaviours as central to symptom persistence because they prevent disconfirmation of key maintaining beliefs. Despite growing evidence of the role of negative beliefs about intrusive memories in depression, it remains unclear why such beliefs persist. Accordingly, we examined whether safety behaviours in response to unhelpful beliefs about intrusive memories might play a role in their maintenance.

An investigation of the relationship between cognitive reactivity and rumination.

Teasdale's (Teasdale, J.D. (1988).

The impact of rumination on memory for self-referent material.

Previous findings have linked rumination to the enhanced retrieval of negative memories (Lyubormirsky, Caldwell, & Nolen-Hoeksema, 1998) and overgeneral autobiographical memories (Watkins & Teasdale, 2004) in depression. However, little is known of the impact of rumination on the encoding of information, and in particular, self-referent information. This study examined the impact of rumination on self-referent encoding in high (BDI-II>or=13) and low (BDI-II View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The relationship between rumination, avoidance and depression in a non-clinical sample.

Recent commentaries have proposed conceptualizations of rumination in terms of both cognitive and behavioral avoidance. This study examined the relationship between rumination, avoidance and depression using a newly developed self-report measure of avoidance in depression, the Cognitive-Behavioral Avoidance Scale (CBAS) [Ottenbreit, N.D.

The effect of practice on recall of negative material in dysphoria.

Background: Little is known of the impact of repeated retrieval of negative material on the content of what depressed individuals remember. On the premise that high dysphoric individuals possess: (i) a tendency to ruminate, and (ii) deficient inhibition of negative material, we hypothesized that they would demonstrate less inhibition of unpracticed and non-practiced negative material.

Methods: High and low dysphoric participants' memory for practiced, unpracticed and non-practiced negative and neutral words was tested with the retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) paradigm.