By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.
“People at risk for depression are dealing with a lot of negative thoughts, feelings and beliefs about themselves and this can easily slide into a depressive relapse. MBCT helps them to recognize that’s happening, engage with it in a different way and respond to it with equanimity and compassion.” – William Kuyken
Depression is epidemic. Major depressive disorder affects approximately 14.8 million American adults, or about 6.7 percent of the U.S. population age 18 and older in a given year. It also affects children with one in 33 children and one in eight adolescents having clinical depression. It is so serious that it can be fatal as about 2/3 of suicides are caused by depression. It makes lives miserable, not only the patients but also associates and loved ones, interferes with the conduct of normal everyday activities, and can come back repeatedly. Even after complete remission, 42% have a reoccurrence.
Depression appears to be the result of a change in the nervous system that can generally only be reached with drugs that alter the affected neurochemical systems. But, of the patients treated initially with drugs only about a third attain remission and even after repeated and varied treatments including drugs, therapy, exercise etc. only about two thirds of patients attain remission. In addition, the drugs can lose effectiveness over time and can have problematic side effects, So, it is important that other safe and effective treatments be identified.
Depression has also been long hypothesized to have roots in early childhood. Patterns of mother-child interactions are thought to produce different forms of attachment styles in the infant, including secure, insecure, avoidant, ambivalent, fearful, preoccupied, and disorganized attachment styles. All of these styles, save secure attachment style, have been found to be associated with depression.
Mindfulness training has been shown to be effective for depression alone or in combination with drug therapy. One way that mindfulness may effect depression is by altering the effects of attachment style on depression. In today’s Research News article “Mediating Role of Mindfulness as a Trait Between Attachment Styles and Depressive Symptoms.” See:
or see summary below. Linares and colleagues investigate this hypothesis. They recruited over 500 adults and measured depression, emotional distress, mindfulness, decentering and attachment styles and statistically investigate the interrelationships between these variables.
They found that high levels of depression were associated with low mindfulness, decentering, and secure attachment styles and with high levels of anxiety and preoccupied and fearful attachment styles. The preoccupied and fearful attachment styles had primarily direct influences with depression. There were small but significant mediation effects for the non-judging facet of mindfulness and for decentering.
These results suggest that attachment styles do indeed affect depression, but mainly do so directly. Non-judging mindfulness and decentering are affected by attachment styles but only have a small effect on the attachment style effects on depression. As has been demonstrated repeatedly in the research literature, mindfulness reduces depression and attachment styles can increase depression, but appear to do so relatively independently. Since they seem to act on depression relatively independently, it may be reasonable to test the combination of mindfulness treatment and treatment for attachment styles for the relief of depression.
So, detach from depression with mindfulness.
CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies
“Mindfulness is a valuable practice for improving the cognitive symptoms of depression, such as distorted thinking and distractibility. It helps individuals recognize these more subtle symptoms, realize that thoughts are not facts and refocus their attention to the present.” – Margarita Tartakovsky
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Study Summary
Linares L, Jauregui P, Herrero-Fernández D, Estévez A. Mediating Role of Mindfulness as a Trait Between Attachment Styles and Depressive Symptoms. J Psychol. 2016 Jul 28:1-16. [Epub ahead of print] DOI: 10.1080/00223980.2016.1207591
Abstract
Attachment styles and dysfunctional symptoms have been associated. This relationship could be affected by metacognitive capacity. The aim of this study is to clarify the relationship between depressive symptoms, attachment styles, and metacognitive capacity. In addition, the mediating role of metacognition between attachment and depressive symptoms has been studied. A total of 505 participants recruited from the general population of the province of Bizkaia (Spain) completed questionnaires regarding depression, anxiety, mindfulness, decentering, and attachment. Results showed positive and significant relations between (a) dysfunctional symptoms and insecure attachment styles and (b) metacognitive capacity and secure attachment style. Additionally, the mediating role of metacognition between attachment and depressive symptoms was confirmed. Intervention in metacognitive abilities such as mindfulness could be a useful therapeutic tool for depressive symptoms.